Egg Basket Building Challenge

I worked with the kindergartners this afternoon on an Easter egg design challenge. They were tasked with building a basket that can hold 5 plastic eggs using the least amount of materials. They were only allowed to use craft sticks, paper clips, pipe cleaners, rubber bands, yarn, or index cards. The tricky part was finding a way to build this basket without the use of glue or tape. They started with a sketch of their idea then had to count how many of each item they would need to build their basket. Once they had a plan, they needed to get into a group of 3 to share their idea and then as a group choose one idea to build or create an entirely new idea using multiple ideas. Once an idea was chosen, students gathered materials and started building. It was a struggle for some groups as they went through the design process and needed to improve their design when they realized how difficult their design would be to build without tape. Some groups decided to change their idea in the midst of this realization and start with a whole new plan. I loved seeing the variation in designs from plan to product and watching their thinking in action. True engineering at work!

These are the baskets students created. You can see the thinking that went into designing these amazing creations.