Spark Truck Visits Town

Today, we had the thrill of spending the day with Stanford d.school's Spark Truck. Second graders toured the Spark Truck in the morning, learning about the high and low tech tinkering tools on board: 3D printers, laser cutters, vinyl cutters, hand tools, craft materials, and more. They were particularly impressed with the freshly laser cut cardboard Spark Trucks they took back to class as a souvenir. As Jackson noted, "They even smelled burned!" observing the connection to their laser production. The visit certainly sparked their imagination and curiosity before embarking on their afternoon challenge.

Did you know we have our own 3D printer in the Upper School STEM lab?

Bipartisan tinkerer

Laser cut Spark Truck!

In the afternoon, they rolled up their sleeves to tackle their own design challenge. They created Vibrobots, a signature Spark Truck activity that's been done with hundreds of kids of all ages across the country. It follows a design sequence of brainstorm, prototype, test, share, and storytell with a strong tinkering element. This iteration had a Town-specific tilt: teachers crafted it to connect to our curriculum. In the midst of studying Chinatown and simple machines, the boys brainstormed zodiac animals and machines to mashup together as zodiac transformers. Their creatures ran the gamut: a monkey wrecking ball, pig dumptruck, snake laser cutter, ox tank, dragon airplane, and even a bouncing bunny bicycle. They got technical tinkering with circuits to build a battery operated motor to make their creature vibrate. Not only did they have to learn how to make them function, but they had to control them and connect them to their creature. Then, using a range of low tech craft materials, they created their creatures. Upon creation, they shared names, stories, and traits about their vibrobots. Who knew the tiger rocket is actually quite shy and that's why he likes to blast off? The activity was capped off in classic 8 year old boy fashion: battle bots! They pitted their vibrobots against each other to see which one would "push" the other off the table. You can imagine the squeals!

If you want to make your own vibrobots at home, check out the lesson in the Spark Truck collection on Instructables.

Vibrobots

Vibrobots

Telling stories about their creatures

Tinkering