What's with the box?

It's here! It's here! The excitement is like waking up on Christmas morning or your birthday! We have successfully made it to 2017! That means we are half way through the school year. We have used half of our learning time. We only have half our learning time left! Oh no! That turned downhill quickly! As I race to fit as much learning, fun, teamwork, and happiness into the rest of the year I wanted to pop in and give you a quick glance at our first day back. We crammed a ton in our day today and I can't wait to show you the awesome-sauce that resulted!

Backstory: Over break I worked on updating 7/8 of our school's iPad carts as well as working on getting 2 new carts setup. In setting up these new carts I got to inbox 60 new iPads. Can we say Christmas and birthday all wrapped into one! Well, let's just say my enthusiasm quickly fled when I realized the cardboard jungle I had then created.

So what was I to do with all of those boxes? Of course, I could just put them in the recycling but why not get some use out of them? Bring on the morning of challenges.

We started by challenging each table to try and create the tallest structure using the materials provided (each group received the same materials: 1 big box, 2 trays, 10 individual boxes). It was amazing to see them trying to figure out how to stack and stand without using tape.

Our Round 1 results are as followed:

So I walked around and measure these amazing structures. They were so excited thinking it was a competition against the other groups. Ha! Little did they know my plan was for them to compete against themselves. We discussed how different groups had tried different techniques and what they had noticed during the process. Then I challenged them to build another structure that was taller than the one they had in front of them. Their task: to beat themselves! Boy did they deliver!

 Each group was able to beat the height of their first structures! How cool is that!

For our 3rd and final challenge teams were tasked with creating the strongest structure. This would be tested with classroom textbooks. Let the building begin!

 In the end, we had two structures that tied at 24 books and counting. We simply ran out of time.

This was one of the best challenges that simply came out of nowhere. Students were challenged, resourceful, and had to work together. Who knew a box could be so fun?

Here's to imagination, creation, and collaboration!