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 grades kindergarten through fifth grade participate. All students work with a partner and are given a design challenge and a bag of “junk” to create a device that solves a specified task.
February’s challenge was to help Cupid pick up his spilled hearts by creating “tongs” to gather them up. Each team of students had to create tongs that were at least 1.5 feet long. Each of the tongs had to have half a basket on one end to scoop and collect as many candy hearts as possible in 45 seconds. To create their tongs, each team was given 10 popsicle sticks, 2 pieces of paper, 6 pipe cleaners, 2 rubber bands, 2 paper clips, 1 ball of clay, and 1 roll of tape.