Catapult the monsters across the chasm to get their treasure back! STEM Challenge

Last week the pirates "found" the treasure and were chased by monsters to the edge of The Chasm of Despair! Our STEM challenge was to design and build a bridge that would support the weight of 3 pirates and their treasure so that they could cross the chasm safely and get back to their ship before the chasing monsters got them! The children designed and made some fantastic bridges and helped the pirates get away.

click here to read all about the pirate bridge building challenge!

But after the STEM challenge some of the children questioned the ethics of their decision to help the pirates. If you put yourself in the shoes of the monsters and saw things from their perspective then you see the situation in a different light! It was the monsters' treasure! The pirates came along and just took it! Just because you have a map that shows you where the treasure is doesn't give you the right to take it for yourself. We had a great discussion about it! 

So it was decided that we had better right the wrong of helping the pirates by building them a bridge to get away. However building another bridge for the monsters to cross would be too time consuming. By the time it was constructed the pirates would have gotten away. We needed something that would  propel the monsters over The Chasm of Despair quickly!  The class brainstormed some ideas and it was decided that a catapult would be the best thing for the job! 

The children then started to research catapult designs. Of course there was a musical visual stimulus to help motivate and inspire the children before they started their task!

The monster catapult song

The children did a wonderful job researching and designing their catapults using the Google draw app. 

 They chose the materials they wanted to use and built their catapults. Everyone had a fun time watching the monsters get launched across The Chasm of Despair. Before the challenge the children estimated how far they thought the monsters would travel through the air. After the challenge they measured the distance the monsters flew. It was great fun!

Well that was the end of part 2! Was it right to help the monsters get across The Chasm of Despair? The debate is still going on. What will happen now the monsters are over the chasm? You'll have to wait till part 3!
The  Pirate clip art I used in the song video is by Hidesy's HIDESY'S CLIPART TPT store.

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Until next time Rocking on!

Rocking Dan Teaching Man