NEM 2016 - Crazy Contraptions

For our first meeting in March, the Guides and Pathfinders participated in the National Engineering Month Crazy Contraptions program. Unfortunately, they were not able to find facilitators for us, so we had to run the program ourselves.

The program organizers provided all the materials needed as well as crests for each participant.

We started out with our usual opening followed by an active game.

The first activity was called "Does/Is Your Engineer...".Each girl was given a card about an engineer. We all shared the name of our engineering and what they do before moving onto the questions. One side of the room was Yes and the other was No. With each question, the girls needed to decide if the statement applied to their engineer or not. This activity opened the girls eyes to the many types of engineering and also to the types of things that engineers do.

The main activity for the evening was building the Cam Toys. We divided the girls into small groups and had each group start by building one toy. They were given a kit, supplies and an instruction sheet. This took about half-an-hour or so with some frustration in getting things to stay together. Each group was then provided with enough kits to make a toy for each girl. This took the remainder of the meeting, but was not as straight-forward as it could be and led to some frustrations. Younger girls would have needed much more Guider intervention to complete this activity.

We ran into a number of challenges doing this activity, however, the girls were all involved and engaged for the entire evening.

Tips for This Activity

• Make a sample before hand so that you know how to put things together.
• Ensure you have lots of alternate methods of 'sticking' things together - i.e. clear tape, masking tape, duct tape, white glue, hot glue guns.
• Encourage the girls to experiment - there is really only one way to put it together in the end, but the girls should reach that conclusion themselves.
• Have an extra activity available for those who finish early. Girls/Groups will take different amounts of time.