Harrison Park Elementary School conducts monthly STEAM projects called “Junk Box Wars.”
STEAM activities incorporate science, technology, engineering, art, and math into one lesson. 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.
April’s Junkbox War was called ‘Egg Race’ and the object was to build a device to pick up eggs, and another device for the head to enable hands-free transport of the eggs to another location. Students were given a bag of random quantities of rubber bands, tongue depressors, cotton swabs, notecards, pipe cleaners, paper clips, straws, toothpicks, coffee filters, bottle caps, string, and a roll of tape.
Winners were named from each grade level, and the students enjoyed the educational and interactive project.
3rd-graders Abby Strasser and Ari Cianciotti build their invention
3rd-graders Maddie Smith and Gracie Ressler with their transportation device
2nd-graders Kaiden Helle and Keaton Washburn enjoyed being partners for the project
Mrs. Pratt’s 2nd Grade Class with Mr. Barnes
4th-graders Beckett Burmeister and Neil Knaresborough finish building their transportation device so they can start testing it out