Engineers in Training?

For the last 5 or 6 Wednesday afternoons Caroline and some other students have stayed behind at school after the dismissal bell. They have been participating in an after-school engineering enrichment class taught by several high school students. Those students took an engineering class last semester at The University and were required to teach the community. Since they had attended our elementary school they offered to teach some of our kids.

There is no question that our students had a good time. There is no question that they learned something - certainly they learned something about engineering, but I'm sure they also learned about working as a team. At this age compromise is a difficult concept. Add to that the fact that these are all extremely bright kids, I can only imagine the level of discussion needed to come to a decision.

Four groups presented their projects yesterday. Caroline & Molly and two boys decided on Cinderella as the theme for their project. They then designed and constructed a machine to flip the magic wand and the fairy dust over Cinderella's head. In addition to having to demonstrate their invention, the students also had to explain any problems they had arriving at a workable end product.

Here's Cinderella before her dusting, and after.