A team of talented designers ran hour-long workshops throughout the school to give the grade students a whole day of hands-on challenges.
In the Fancy Footwear workshop, the kids designed and constructed their own shoes out of paper and glue. Students were asked to incorporate four different methods of creating strength using just these very limited materials. The kids made some amazing footwear- both fancy and functional!
The Critterville workshop challenged kids to build an animal home from picnic wear (plastic cutlery, foam cups, paper plates, straws and coffee stirrers). The students explored how to join materials in novel ways to shape and stabilize their structure. We asked them to do this with no glue and as little tape as possible. This encouraged them to think about strength, balance and material manipulation-all critical qualities for architects and builders. Despite the fact that kids love tape, some of them rose to this engineering puzzle!
In Logomania, the students learnt some of the elements of graphic design and branding. They came up with vibrant pen drawings of logos for the Toronto Zoo, the Design-a-thon itself and Invention Squad.
In the Mouse House workshop students explored paper engineering to make pop-up houses. Many of them enjoyed painting their pictures in exuberant colours.
Robot Design was a very free-form workshop run by Walnut Studios and a couple of volunteer OCAD students. Students animated found materials to create a whole range of charming robots.
In the Skyscrapers workshop the design challenge was to build the tallest structure possible out of construction paper. Some of the groups formed teams and turned this into a competition. Students were introduced to concepts of mass, tension and compression and how to mitigate these using trussing and cross-bracing.
Invention Squad would like to thank all the fabulous designers, volunteers and school staff who made this fun event possible!!
