If you’ve ever had the chance to stop by the STEAM room at Mandalay or Forest Lake, you will see that there’s always something fun going on. During the month of October, fourth grade students in Ms. DelPiano’s STEAM class spent four weeks partnering with one another as they designed and built simple machines using materials like cardboard, duct tape, pulley wheels, regular wheels, dowels, pipe cleaners and mini buckets to name a few. 

Simple machines are tools that make difficult tasks easier by changing the direction of the force or the amount of force needed to do something.

During the first week, students visited centers for research before taking the next step in the project. The second week included outlining the plans for their simple machine in detail with their partner(s). Weeks three and four were then spent building each simple machine piece by piece with careful detail while discovering which pieces worked together and which ones didn’t. At the end of the month, students successfully completed the unit learning more about how simple machines work taking great pride in their projects.