Meet me at the carnival

Roll up! Rollup! It's carnival time at Invention Squad. What better way to beat off the winter blues than to design a great fair game and play it with your friends? This was definitely the funnest, wackiest session yet. We challenged the kids to make a transportable/foldable set-up and to test it by playing it with their friends and parents. This is cardboard prototyping and design by play- a natural for kid experimenters.

This design had a moving element. The girls came up with a spinning ball trap, with cups attached to a central cylinder.

Testing time. This game is trickier than it looks.

This two person game is built like a tray to be carried around one person's neck. Players face one another and compete to get balls into the suspended cups.

               
  This team decided to go big and built a personal pool table. Loads of action, lots of laughs.

Invent something awesome: Spring Session

A 9 week session is starting up on Mondays at Artscape Youngplace. There will be a pick up at Givins Shaw school. Students from other schools are welcome to join us at Artscape. 

Here's our new schedule:

Week 1 (April 13th): "Tick-tock"
Time to re-invent the watch.

Week 2 (April 20th): "Cityscaping"
Design a sidewalk feature: furniture, info booth, exercise device or perhaps all of these combined! 

Week 3 (April 27th): "Helping Hand" 
Build a mechanical device to grab an object from far away. 

Week 4 (May 4th): "Dream vacation bedroom!" 
Plan the perfect getaway for kids. 

Week 5 (May 11th): "Chain Reaction" 
Team up to make a giant moving (Rube Goldberg) machine

Week 6 (May 25th): "Pop-up!"
Use paper engineering to make your pages come to life. 

Week 7 (June 1st): "Club starter" Invent a new club. Design the logo for a button, a poster and club activities. 

Week 8 (June 8th): "Help!' Survive a tornado in your backpack emergency shelter. 

Week 9 (June 15th): "Watercraft" Construct a boat or hovercraft that will carry an elephant across the water.