Once a year the school that I teach at hosts a very special event. Families are asked to invite a grandparent or adult friend to come and share an hour of their child’s school day. The adults come in and do a craft, look in their desks, check out the computers or do some other engaging one on one activity. It is a lot of fun and we all look forward to it each year. This year, Special Friends Day happened to be planned on a day that I was not scheduled to teach. As luck would have it, my school called to ask if I could step in and sub in the second grade classroom.
As I hung up the phone my imagination went wild! What an opportunity to showcase a spontaneous challenge where children would be on a similar playing field as their adult partners. I grabbed my book, Team Challenges by Kris Bordessa, and started creating a plan. I did not have time to purchase or gather supplies. Everything needed to be in my own cupboard or garage because I did not have time to go to the store. With a couple of adjustments, I settled on having the teams create suspension bridges out of toothpicks and marshmallows.
Oh those unsuspecting adults that walked into my classroom on that cold spring morning. I lured them in with a simple and engaging writing activity. The children worked and the adults sat around chatting. After 20 minutes, the class was stopped and the challenge was set.
On my signal, the room was abuzz. Adults grabbed any chair they could find and sat down to discuss a plan of attack. They would need to build a bridge using only the supplies given. In ten minutes their bridge needed to span six inches across two desks and be able to hold my snack, an apple. I walked around and marveled at the approaches that children and adults took in meeting the objectives of the task.Two minutes in and a student asked if they could use the brown bag that the supplies came in. This question and answer, changed the course of many designs. They had a new material that could be used in many ways to add support.
After ten minutes they tested the bridge to make sure that it could span six inches. The teams were given five more minutes to redesign and ensure that it could hold an apple. We tested the bridges and found success at each group. The adults and children had just spend forty minutes fully engaged in Making with their grandchild or friend. Those types of connections are hard to beat!
As I hung up the phone my imagination went wild! What an opportunity to showcase a spontaneous challenge where children would be on a similar playing field as their adult partners. I grabbed my book, Team Challenges by Kris Bordessa, and started creating a plan. I did not have time to purchase or gather supplies. Everything needed to be in my own cupboard or garage because I did not have time to go to the store. With a couple of adjustments, I settled on having the teams create suspension bridges out of toothpicks and marshmallows.
Oh those unsuspecting adults that walked into my classroom on that cold spring morning. I lured them in with a simple and engaging writing activity. The children worked and the adults sat around chatting. After 20 minutes, the class was stopped and the challenge was set.
On my signal, the room was abuzz. Adults grabbed any chair they could find and sat down to discuss a plan of attack. They would need to build a bridge using only the supplies given. In ten minutes their bridge needed to span six inches across two desks and be able to hold my snack, an apple. I walked around and marveled at the approaches that children and adults took in meeting the objectives of the task.Two minutes in and a student asked if they could use the brown bag that the supplies came in. This question and answer, changed the course of many designs. They had a new material that could be used in many ways to add support.
After ten minutes they tested the bridge to make sure that it could span six inches. The teams were given five more minutes to redesign and ensure that it could hold an apple. We tested the bridges and found success at each group. The adults and children had just spend forty minutes fully engaged in Making with their grandchild or friend. Those types of connections are hard to beat!