Tiny Project Managers: Tin Foil Boats

Buoyancy.  The ability to float in water.  Simple concept, but plenty of wiggle room in which to question, craft, and experiment.

Grad school was good for a few things, two of them sticking out in my mind as exceptional.  It was exceptional for introducing me to lifelong friends who had also heard the siren song of becoming an educator.  Those folks at my grad school fueled my enthusiasm for education and taught me that I was not crazy for wanting to teach.  They are bright minds with huge hearts.

The other exceptional gift of grad school was a veritable trough of great ideas.  There were lesson plans and even briefer ideas, pooled together in a continuous brainstorm.  As teachers-to-be, we grad students taught each other.  Tin foil boats are just one of a thousand good ideas that I have learned from teacher friends.

Tin foil boats are small but rugged.  They are constructed from a single 4 by 4 inch square of foil.

When I told the kids to make a tin foil boat, the lag time was priceless.

They kept waiting for elaboration.  How do we do it?  What's the first step?

The first step is to brainstorm, you see.  Commune with your inner architect.  Build the sturdiest boat that you can imagine.

No small demand, especially considering the sparse materials that we were working with.

We wanted to see exactly how much freight our boats could handle.  In our case, the "freight" were some glossy marble-type stones, most often found in fish tanks.

As true scientists, we were able to conduct two trials.  The initial boats were pretty impressive, but oh, did we learn from that first trial.  Our second tries were mightier, sturdier, more confident.

It was so awesome to watch these scientists at work, as they examined the various designs of the boats.  They monitored what worked, what didn't work so well.  They dutifully charted.  And they realized that it was not about which boat could hold the most stones (though that was cool to see!) - it was about trial and error, documentation, and making your second boat better after learning from the first.

Fun, simple, inexpensive experiments.  With lots of learning and working together.  Bliss in a classroom.

Love Mariana's constant enthusiasm and determination.  Excellent boat!

Andrew and James confer about best practices :)

Some of us are on tip toes in excitement to see how many stones this boat will hold!