Thrifting in the Mitten

Any teacher loves a good bargain, right?  With school budgets crunching numbers for next year, extra monies for classroom staples such as paper and pencils are dwindling as I type this blog post.  Not to mention extra little luxuries such as composition books, grade level text books, glue, staples, markers, etc.  So forget the fun stuff that will force students to problem solve and get creative, right?

NO!

We must model creative problem solving.  WE are teachers...this is part of what we do...so model!  Go thrifting!  Wait...we already do.  :)  Most teachers (including myself) spend the summers scanning store shelves and garage sales for items we could use or repurpose in our classrooms.  We nag for store discounts...our pennies are precious (with pay cuts and rising insurance premiums).  I justify my out-of-pocket spending by asking this one question, "Will it truly enable my students to learn (insert unit/concept/learning goal)?"  If the answer is yes, then I figure out how much I can scrape by with and take a deep breath.

In comes my latest assignment from my current graduate class (CEP 811 through the MSU MAET Program, if your are curious...): Repurposing & Thrifting.  We were suppose to go thrift shopping (in person or virtually) and find some objects to incorporate/interact with our Maker Kit (I chose the littleBits Starter Kit) that could be used in our classrooms.

I love the littleBits kit!  It is fun (bright colors!) and easy to use...every little bit fits together with magnets.  This is fool proof for even the most electrically challenged.  (==> me!)  My five year old

son was able to create a few simple circuits as well.  The different types of bits are color coded by purpose: blue - power; pink - input; green - output; orange - wire.  All the pieces came in a nice little box with a nine volt battery and cable as well as an instruction sheet...but who needs instructions when there is discovery to be had?  I spent approximately three hours experimenting with the little bits and how they work together. 

For me, finding a way to incorporate this assignment into my lessons was kinda easy...electrical circuits are a national standard taught at my grade level, but I wanted to take this a step further and incorporate another science standard that I will be teaching next year: forces that shape the Earth.  There is a cool output bit called a bargraph (part 09) that has five lights that respond to the input.  It reminded me of a Richter Scale...earthquakes!  There is another bit that is a vibration motor (part 04) that I thought would work well for demonstrating the shaking felt from earthquakes.  A force that shapes the Earth!  Bingo!

Now for thrifting...I went to my local Goodwill but the only things I found that I thought would work well with my earthquake machine were Legos...and my son has tons of them at home and at school.  I knew I would need somethings that were small and lightweight. So I thrifted from my house too...some matches and smaller Legos.

Earthquake Machine directions:

1. You need the following bits: Battery and connector, Wall power bit (p1), Potentiometer bit (i6), Vibration motor bit (o4), Bar graph bit (o9), Wire bit (w1)
2. Connect the battery to the wall power, the wall power to the wire, the wire to the potentiometer, the potentiometer to the bar graph, and the bar graph to the motor (as in the picture below)

3. Cut a piece of cardstock approximately the size of a postcard or a little bigger out of a used box.
4. Place the circuit on the cardboard. Using it as a guide for positioning, mark where holes should be cut for the potentiometer, bar graph lights and the motor to pop through.
5. Cut the holes out of the cardstock face and make sure that everything fits well.
6. Take the cardstock off the circuit and decorate it as you like. Then, place the decorated cardstock back on your circuit.
7. Carefully flip the circuit and the cardstock over, and attach the circuit to your cardboard with electrical tape.  Masking tape also works well.
8. Cut a small square out of the card -board, about one inch on each side.  Loop a piece of regular tape to the back of the square piece of card-board.  Stick one side of the motor to the tape. .
9.  Make another loop of tape, and attach it to the cardboard front of your quake machine.
Stick the other side of the motor to your quake machine. You should now have a little platform that will quake when you turn on your circuit.

10. Test out your circuit. When you turn the potentiometer, you should see the bar graph light up. The more lights you see on the graph, the more your quake machine should shake
11. Once your machine has been tested and is working, put it in a safe place until you are ready to use it to simulate an earthquake.

Earthquake Machine Activity:

 Prior to creating the circuit, we will have activated prior knowledge and either read about earthquakes or watched a Discovery Education video, just to get students familiar with the Richter Scale and the basics of earthquakes.  Then students would be asked to thrift themselves by finding and bringing in small, light-weight items to test out on their earthquake machines.

In small groups or pairs, students would conduct active research with their earthquake machines with their found materials and collect data in their science notebooks such as the intensity of the 'earthquake,' the time it took to shake off the items, etc.  At the end, the entire class would share the results of their research.

Here is a brief video of my attempt at using my Earthquake machine:

 I can't wait to play around with my littleBits Stater kit some more so I can find more ways to incorporate it into my classroom!

(This project is very similar to one found on the littleBits Project Page...I found this after I came up with my concept.  My activity and extensions are entirely original work.)

littleBits. (n.d.). Quake Machine - Projects. Retrieved from http://littlebits.com/projects/quake-machine