Saturday, August 14, 2010

Rube Goldberg machines


Oh, what's that you say? You've never heard of this guy Rube? Well you can check out this or this (or, of course, this) to get the scoop on the fella. What a lot of fun. I was a little worried that this project wouldn't really take off, that maybe the kids wouldn't quite get it. They dove right in with synapses blazing! Idea! Boom. Idea! Blang. Idea! Kapow. It was a beautiful thing to see. As usual I didn't do a very good job at capturing the magic... there were a few other little teams of kids working that I didn't even get a shot of, including some kids up in the fort who were working on a pulley system to get a chair up there, which I thought was pretty cool. Educational even!













2 comments:

Let the Children Play said...

Kami that is soooo cool. Did you have any vague sort of plan of how it would work, or did you just supply a whole bunch of materials and let them go for it?

(I'm putting together a rough idea for my own tinkering style summer holiday program to see if it is at all feasible / doable and am feeling a bit lost!)

Kami said...

That is so fantastic, Jenny!! Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help... I'd love to offer ideas/support. This project worked amazingly well. I had concerns that they wouldn't quite get it and wouldn't be interested. I wrote an email to the parents beforehand with some links to Rube Goldberg machines on youtube and asked them to watch them with their kids beforehand. Of course there's the amazingly inspiring and exciting OK Go video, but I also wanted them to see some kid-made, simple ones. I think the kids came into it already raring to go with lots of ideas and inspiration so I was SO glad about that. This was definitely one of the most fun projects I did this summer.