Harrison Park Elementary School conducts monthly STEAM projects called “Junk Box Wars.”
STEAM activities incorporate science, technology, engineering, art, and math into one project. The Junk Box Wars projects encourage students to use their scientific knowledge to create and design a device. Students in kindergarten through fifth grade work with a partner and are given a design challenge and a bag of “junk” to create a device that solves a specified task.
November’s challenge was called "Candy Corn Catapults". The students had one hour to create a catapult that could launch a piece of candy corn into the target, a pumpkin bucket. Each pair of students was given a bag of materials including popsicle sticks, spoons, rubber bands, straws, bottle caps, pipe cleaners and rolls of tape in order to build their catapults. They enjoyed putting their catapults to the test in a friendly competition with their classmates.