STEAM manipulatives

Today is a major holiday in India, Ganesh Chaturthi, where millions take Ganesha to the beach to be immersed. There's a lot of music, dancing, drums, processions, and celebrations. The girls had the day off school so I had a few join in that I don't normally get to work with.

Pouring monsoon rain, a holiday, and a bunch of eager girls meant: manipulatives. 

I plan to incorporate a STEAM-related activity each month, and fortunately so many fun things fall under the STEAM umbrella: including manipulatives.

The older girls have been studying force, motion, and velocity and need a bit of hands on reinforcement. We started with a warm-up on the iPads using the Meet Science app. They watched some instructional force and motion videos and demos of related experiments, and then they played a couple of catchy games that reinforced the concepts. These girls are super bright and are doing high school level physics. While this app is geared for younger kids, it worked fine as a lead-in activity or extra practice to reinforce the concepts.

iPads are awesome but the ideal plan is 1:1 instead of sharing. I'm going to do better cycling girls through and giving them the space to explore on their own for maximum benefit.

Next, I followed this framework for working with Keva planks. I first discovered these blocks at the USA Science and Engineering Festival while in Washington, D.C. several years ago. I was immediately impressed with how simple they were and yet required critical thinking skills to produce complex outcomes. Most importantly, they are fun and kids of various ages love how open-ended and versatile they are. Today we stayed pretty basic.

I gave them 10 planks and challenged them to build as high as they could. Then they did the same with 20 planks. They rotated spots and added another person's structure. I gave them 4 small cubes and asked them to build a structure starting with only the 4 cubes on the bottom. I asked them to design a ramp that would carry a ball down and we filmed it in slow motion and talked about the force of hitting the dominoes at the bottom.

I found it fascinating how individual each girl's approach was. Some instinctively dove in and seemed to know just what they wanted to build and how to make it come together. Others struggled and kept looking at the instruction booklet for some ideas. Some got restless after a few attempts and some could have built for hours. 

I asked them questions as we went along about how a ball might fall through their structure, what would happen, how high would it bounce, or similar attempts to get them predicting. Nothing was too formal but I think they had fun and saw a bit of force in action. 

Next up, the younger and middle crew. For them, I set up several different stations and we rotated through. Again, it was fun to see different approaches, creative thinking, and problem-solving skills. Some organized by color. Some prefers to work with a partner and others alone. They enjoyed showing off their creations and trying some new tools.

Plus Plus (she made the Indian flag)

These girls are sharp, creative, and open to new experiences. I look forward to what we'll try next.