We Provide STEM Education for Kids!
Welcome to Play2Learn PBP Phase 1! We’re excited to have you!
Today we built battery powered cars and raced them in the large room. There were some exceptional builders today and all were easily able to complete the builds on time. The topic for next week is a beam balance and please help the children to organise their boxes.
Today was the last day of class and the students were allowed to choose between a free build or a challenge. The students who chose a free build came up with some incredible creations while the challenge team were all very good at coming up with solutions to the problem of lifting a water bottle with a fishing rod.
Thank you all for another wonderful semester and we hope to see you all again in January
Keep on dreaming!
This week we built a fishing rod. The fishing rod used pullies to extend and pull in the hook. I would really appreciate it if everyone stuck with their teammates because some people left their teammates to go and play. So, before you leave, please finish your project and make sure your partner is complete as well.
Today we built the walker and used the material that we learned in the past two classes about screws, worms, gears, and levers in order to make the walker walk. The kind loved playing around with their walkers almost as much as they did building them. I apologise for posting these classminutes late as my PC ran into a hardware issue and could not be booted until recently.
Last week in class we built drag cars. This was a more difficult project, so I didn’t get time to go over the lesson. Essentially, the drag car is propelled forward by the spinning gear, which propels the car forward. When the button was pressed on the base, it connected the spinning gear on the base to the dormant gear on the car. The base was able to spin the gear on the drag car which continued to turn, propelling the car forward.
Today in class we built flywheel cars. A fly wheel is a device that stores rotational energy. The motions of the flywheels continue because of inertia. This allowed the car to move forward, even after the wheels have stopped! This was very enjoyable for the kids because they had an opportunity to race against each other. See you next week!
Today we built a worm gear as well as screws and the students were allowed to reverse engineer a demonstration model I had built. We learned how the worm gear worked including it’s ability to be driven in only one configuration. The students loved making the model and quite a few students showed great ability to reverse engineer the model. The topic for next week will be a difficult build, the Walker, and since there wasn’t any pieces left on the ground today the students will get chocolate next week.
Hello everyone!
My apologies for the later post. Last week we built sweeper cars! This was a fun way to learn about gears and rotations. We noticed that a gear turns another gear an equal circumference to itself, for example when a larger gear turned a small gear, the small gear rotated extremely fast because it needed to be rotated according to the circumference of the larger gear.
This week we worked in teams and that worked out nicely. Next week you will be working in teams but with other students. I may include a prize for the fastest group! Next week we will be building a Fly Wheeler.
Today we built a hammer. This build taught students about friction and force. Depending on the tightness of each gear the friction is different. The students discovered that larger gears had a higher friction than the smaller gears. The force of the hammer was able to push the axle into the gear as well. Next week I would really appreciate it if students would check if each piece was inside their kit to make sure no one will have trouble finding anything.
Today in class we built motor cars. Although it was a little out of the student’s comfort zones, the majority of them were still able to complete it. This project helped them with the fundamentals of building with Lego, the parts and the instructions. Next week we built balances which the student’s enjoyed.
