Help kids experience the joy of exploring new ideas when you encourage them to solve a problem in your home, or offer this eggs-cellent challenge that inspires inventive thinking.
What you’ll need:
- raw eggs
- tape and glue
- string
- scissors
- cardboard tubes, Styrofoam, plastic bags, sponges, tissue paper, paper, bubble wrap, cotton balls, straws, rubber bands, etc.
- pencil and paper
- tape measure
Directions:
Without good packaging, those green eggs might have never reached Sam-I-Am’s skillet! Read Green Eggs and Ham aloud, then ask kids to imagine Sam-I-Am with a different problem—keeping uncooked eggs from breaking before they reach the kitchen. Challenge them to invent an egg protector—a special something they create that keeps a raw egg from breaking when dropped.
Provide a wide variety of materials for building, and encourage kids to use them to design some way of preventing an egg from breaking. Have kids think about how the materials work and how they are going to use them. As they review materials and make decisions, have them sketch designs for their egg protector. Let them know they’ll be testing their inventions with a drop from a particular height. Will their egg be unbroken after a 4-foot drop? Have them start building!
When the egg is secure in its egg protector, get out the tape measure and head outside (or protect your floor with a drop cloth). Measure up 4 feet from the ground and drop the egg protector! If the invention keeps eggs from breaking at 4 feet, go higher! Keep dropping the egg in the egg protector from higher heights.
After you’ve dropped the egg as high as you can go, talk with kids about why they chose the materials they used. Why did or didn’t their egg break? Ask what they might do differently if they built another egg protector. Would they choose different materials? Encourage them to offer their ideas for revisions and, if you have more eggs, test their solutions!