Thank you Ali for the chance to play with Legos and learn more about Play Well.
I am putting the link for her blog that she shared with us today here in case anyone wants to follow along on her adventures.
http://playingtolearnengineering.blogspot.com/
Hey Ali,
ReplyDeleteI liked your blog and its great to see the kids having so much fun learning engineering. I saw that you commented on the struggle with getting projects the girls were excited about and I wanted to share some ideas from when I used to run an afterschool club called LEGO girls. Some projects that the girls really enjoyed were building a music box using lots of gears and a motor to make LEGO people spin, a carousel that some of my girls brought in LEGO animals for making the whole thing spin while the animals went up and down, and the making Egyptian pyramids. For this activity, we told stories about how pyramids used to be built in Ancient Egypt and challenged the girls to gear down a something that could pull an Egyptian sled with building materials up the ramp. The history (even talking about how hard it must have been for slaves at the time) really encouraged the girls to design new ways of bringing things up the ramps instead of the common racing that is typically done to teach gearing down. Hopefully you can successfully engage the girls in your LEGO adventures to come!
Anne