How difficult is it to build a bridge? The amount of Manpower, Mind power, Materials required, the attention to details! Simply put the engineering miracle. Amazing structures of the world leave a profound impression on visitors.
This post is sponsored by GuideCraft. As alaways the content and opinions are mine.
The Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge is a road bridge between an island and the mainland of Japan. The roadway hangs from strong steel cables that are supported by enormous towers on each side of the bridge. The Span between the towers measure 1,991 meters and is the longest in the world. Do you know the Steel Cable used on the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge would wind around the world more than seven times?
The Millau Bridge in France the highest bridge in the world. It crosses the Valley of the River Tarn 270 meters above the water. You could Stack three Big Bens in the Space underneath.
We read tons of amazing facts about bridges around the world and how a bridge was built, the engineering brains and works involved. But how to teach kids practically on how difficult is it build them?? Building involves more than just building the bridge. The entire process teaches kids, the planning, the design process, attention to details, the failures, and the Wins!
I wanted to make an effort to teach him the process and the pain involved. I cannot make him build a realistic bridge so I decided to use the building blocks Guidecraft’s PowerClix Frames to emulate the process of building the bridges. These Frames are for teaching and exploring wireframe geometry.
We started off Learning about the Design process. Projects like these would be a great opportunity to teach engineering concepts. Download this simple printable of “Teach The Design process to kids“!
Once the kids pass a certain age, it’s important to teach them how to identify the problem, how to come up with ideas to solve the problem(brainstorming), Ways to fix the issue(The design and the build process), the failures you will come across and ways to fix them(Problem-solving, testing, evaluating, redesigning)
Once I went through these steps with my son we started building the model. Guidecraft’s PowerClix is a great way to build different structures as they have 8 different geometrical shapes.
A child may build unlimited 3D forms by visualizing the underlying design structure of an object, then creating a wireframe model of it using magnetic frames of geometric shapes.
I let me son be in the driver seat and let him build the bridge. The bridge we started building was falling off initially as he was not able to place the shapes in order.
Through the build process even though he was frustrated because the bridge was falling off, he had learned to be patient and also follow the step by step process. It took him few minutes to figure out and once he did he was able to soak in the fact that there is a process to follow and failures are just fun part of engineering!
That’s his victory pose! I have no clue what that was!
My Little one is always in an Awe of her brother. Always wondering what her brother is up to!
It was a productive afternoon where we could learn about the design process and build wireframes using Guidecraft PowerClix . Building blocks help with fine motor skills and spatial thinking with STEM applications. Thanks to our little one for taking a Nap while we had some quality time learning.
What are you building today?
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