Activities
Use the Implementation Guide to plan your approach to any and all of the Playful Building activities. It offers a facilitation outline to help you organize your presentation; facilitator background information and a shopping list to help you prepare for your program; supporting media lists; and correlations to National Science Education Standards. From there, use the step-by-step activity guides to explore the central idea of an imagined community park:
Plan
Participants are invited to imagine the park of their dreams! In small groups, they place moveable pieces on a grid, iterating on their plan together to create a plan for a community park.Activity 1: Design a Park
How-to Video: Design a ParkPlay
Participants explore how different types of simple machines can be used for fun at a community park. They are challenged to create a simple human machine that transports a bean bag. Many groups solve the challenge with a slide — an inclined plane or an inclined plane that has been twisted into a screw shape — made of their hands. They plan, design, test, and revise a boat (with a bow that serves as a wedge, cutting through water) and update that playground classic, the seesaw (a type of lever).Activity 2: Team Machine
How-to Video: Team Machine
Activity 3: Water Wedges
How-to Video: Water Wedges
Step-by-step instructions for folding an origami boat: http://usra.adobeconnect.com/p1071pal7hv/Activity 4: Levers at Play
How-to Video: Levers at Play
Power and Protect
Families or groups of children are challenged to solve two problems that they might face in a community park: providing clean water and supplying electricity (such as for lighting along paths and trails). They explore and test common materials to identify the best low-tech materials that can be used to help filter water for a pond, water playground, pool, or other recreational water feature. In another activity, explore and test common materials to modify model wind turbines to better catch the wind.Activity 5: Low-tech Water Filter for High-impact Clean
How-to Video: Low-tech Water Filter for High-impact Clean
Activity 6: Wind Turbine Tech Challenge
How-to Video: Wind Turbine Tech Challenge
All Playful Building materials are also available free for educational use at www.starnetlibraries.org.
June 2, 2015