Engineering Design Process: Create
Groups work together to make the solution they designed.
Watch & Reflect: “Are You Ready to Test?”
Three preschool students work with their teacher on creating a noisemaker that makes a loud noise. In previous sessions, students explored the materials available to create their design.
Related Engineering Practices: Envision Multiple Solutions, Construct and Use Models and Prototypes, Explore Properties and Uses of Materials
Featured Unit: Wee Engineer
Reflection Questions
The students comment on their thinking about how loud or quiet certain materials are such as pompoms being quiet and cork being kind-of-quiet. These were materials they explored in the earlier activities, but they may also have prior knowledge they are bringing to the activity.
The students comment that pompoms are quiet and cork is kind-of-quiet. They explored these materials in the earlier activities, but students may also have prior knowledge they are bringing to the activity.
The preschool students work independently, but side-by-side with their peers. This allows all students to work on their fine motor skills and create their own design and sets them up to succeed in collaborative planning in the future.
The teacher works with one small group at a time at a center rather than having the whole class create at the same time, which allows the teacher to support and scaffold the students more closely.
Students create and test within a short period of time. This helps them quickly make improvements within the developmentally appropriate attention span of preschool students.