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How could you invent a trap?
Force Olympics Unit | Lesson 6 of 6

How could you invent a trap?

Force Olympics Unit | Lesson 6 of 6
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# Optional Activity: Be an Inventor
  1. An inventor is someone who comes up with ways to solve problems or make tasks easier. Watch this videoto learn about some inventors and their inventions.

  2. A woman named Joshephine Cochran invented the dishwasher so she didn’t have to do the dishes. Discuss: Do you have a chore that a machine could help you do?

  3. Choose a chore you want a machine to help you with. Then act it out — pretend to do the chore.

  4. Think about how a machine could help with your chore—or better yet, do the chore for you. Draw a picture of your machine.

  5. When your picture is done, find a partner. Tell your partner what your invention does and how it works.

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# Extensions
Below are ideas for extending this topic beyond the activity & exploration you just completed.
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# Additional Activities
  • Find the Inventions All Around Us: Ask your students to walk around the classroom and look for inventions. Talk about the inventions they find. Inventions in your classroom may include paper and pencils; tape, pushpins, and crayons; staplers and hole punches; electric lights and the switches that turn them on and off, and so on.

  • Make an invention box for your classroom. This article from Modern Parents/Messy Kids provides ideas for what to put in the box and some prompts for tasks that the inventions could accomplish.

  • Invent a Backscratcher: For a hands-on activity, check out this Teach Engineering activity, in which students use simple materials to invent a backscratcher.

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Grade K

Forces, Machines, & Engineering

Forces & Engineering

K-PS2-2, K-2-ETS1-2

1160 reviews

Activity Prep

Print Prep

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In this Read-Along lesson, twins Mimi and Lulu try different ways to catch a mysterious nighttime visitor…until they hit on just the right solution. The lesson includes a short exercise where students imagine how to design a good monster trap, and then pretend to be sneaky monsters. You can extend the lesson with the optional activity, Be an Inventor, where students draw their own inventions for machines that do chores.

Preview optional activity

Grade K

Forces, Machines, & Engineering

Forces & Engineering

K-PS2-2, K-2-ETS1-2

1160 reviews
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