Children love to build. Right from using building blocks to rising sand towers, the building becomes a part of growing. This activity will harness children’s innate love for building to teach them teamwork. In this activity, groups of children will try to build the tallest possible tower with the cardboard pieces provided to them, using their knowledge of various cardboard joints. By equipping children with knowledge of various cardboard joints, you can further enable them to make various other amazing stuff with cardboard.
Time required
45 - 60 minutes
Materials required
Cardboard
Scissors
Skills Focussed
Team building
Divergent thinking
Aligned Professions:
Structural Engineering
Instructions
Step 0:
This activity is primarily intended to help build teams. Divide the students into teams if they aren't divided already.
Step 1:
Introduce students to the basic cardboard joints. You can go through the below video for reference. Also, clearly instruct the students that they can only use the joining methods to attach pieces of cardboard. Using adhesives is not allowed.
Step 2:
Ration cardboard pieces to the groups and let them know that they have to build the tallest tower possible with the available cardboard within a stipulated time.
Step 3:
Set a condition that the first person to add cardboard to the tower can add again only after all the team members have added once, to ensure that none of the members is dominant or dormant.
Step 4:
Once the teams have completed building the towers, measure the tallest tower to determine the winning team.
You can also level up the challenge by checking if the tower withstands a strong gush of air by blowing on it.
Special Instructions for teachers:
Distribute even number of cardboards to all the teams
Cut the cardboard into even shapes before beginning the activity and issue the same number of cardboard pieces among the teams to avoid arguments within teams.
Teaching Cardboard Joints
Introducing cardboard joints to the students could be a bit time-consuming. Therefore, you can consider teaching it in a separate session before doing the activity. You can also consider doing Animal Sculpture activity while teaching cardboard joints.
Introducing Structures
Apart from team building, this activity could also serve as a brilliant way to introduce the concept of structural engineering to students. You can motivate them to explore how skyscrapers stand tall without falling and the importance of sturdy structures in construction.
You can also discuss how the centre of gravity plays an important role in balancing.
Have fun making and share the works of your students with the hashtag #projectprayogshala to get featured!
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