Innovations are largely driven by the quest to make life easier, a concept Tollgate Elementary School of Expeditionary Learning’s second grade students have enjoyed exploring. The class recently created and hosted The Kids Museum of Simple Machines to showcase simple machines they built, demonstrate how they work and identify the impact machines have on our world.
Through exhibits, videos, plays and more, students detailed how screws, wedges, pulleys, levers, wheels, and inclined planes simplify our lives. Guests also enjoyed a Rube Goldberg machine presentation.
To ensure the success of the museum, students assumed different roles and formed expert groups. One group contributed to the event as builders who assembled the machines while others contributed as writers who created the posters, artists who created the diagrams, speakers who produced the pamphlet, and so forth.
Student Karina Lopez Serrano loved her role as a builder for the pulley project.
“We worked with Ryan the architect,” said Serrano. “We had a lot of things to do and figured out we had to work in a team. I like working with teams because if you do things alone, you won’t get everything done.”
With a new sense of purpose, Serrano adds, “I’ve never done this before. I didn’t know if I could do it, but with a little help, you can do anything. In the future, I want to be an architect! I want to make blueprints for people to know how to do things.”
