Introduce the Engineering Design Process. (EDP) Ask-Imagine-Plan-Create-Improve. What is an engineer? Show YouTube video. LINK (4 minutes, 30 seconds.)
Read, “What Do You Do With an Idea?” Discuss what this means. How ideas evolve, and need nurturing. Explain that they will be creating a shelter for their idea that must include different areas: Somewhere to sleep, somewhere to eat, somewhere to play, a place to grow and a place to watch the stars. Students can work individually, in pairs or groups. They can start designing their plan for their shelters.
Students will work on their shelters for about a week. They will then present and talk about challenges they encountered and changes that were made.

Spider Climber Project : In this activity, students will build a spider that can climb up a string. Students will examine the similarities and differences between three different types of spiders and will choose one of the templates below to color. They’ll attach their spider to a piece of yarn and work with a partner to make their spider climb up its string!

Intro to circuits. What are they? Where can we find them? What do they do. Introduce open and closed circuits. Demonstrate with light switches opening and closing circuits. Show a simple circuit.
Have students experiment with open and closed simple circuits. Introduce concept of conductors and insulators. (Show cut off cord) Pass out paper where students make a hypothesis of whether each item listed is a conductor or an insulator.
Test conductors and insulators. Pass out baggies of materials. (Plastic fork, penny, play doh, piece of cloth, binder clip) Students should record their discoveries. They can then look around the room and find other conductors/insulators. Show them that PEOPLE are conductors! Hold hands while completing the circuit.
Makey Makey: Show MM on Smartboard. Allow students to hook up their own and play. Find insulators and conductors for it.
Experiment with Makey Makeys for one more day.

Introduce students to ‘The Hour of Code’. Show intro video. LINK Get students logged in and go through tutorial with them. Offline coding activities. (HOC activities, Robot Turtles, Steps to get me across the room…)
Work on the Hour of Code (HOC) for about a week. Students can apply their knowledge to any of the codeable robots in the room.

Show students how to use www.tinkercad.com Explain that the thumnails are the ‘windows’ of the other students’ work and they should NOT go into the ‘house’ of other students. They need to ‘CREATE’ their own project and make sure they put their own name up in the top left box.
For a demonstration, show how to make a keychain. Drag out a cube, resize it, put on a second workplane, drag out text, change the letters, add a hole, show how you can add other shapes and text to the back and sides, but add workplanes! Show how to measure how big it is and resize. Let students tinker for 2-3 days. Give students a theme if they want the opportunity to have their design printed. Let all of the students vote on the top 3.
3D Pens. Half of the class gets a tutorial and a week to work with 3D pens while the other half of the class works on passion projects.

Year 2 Plans of 2 Year Rotating Curriculum (These plans were created with 4th grade in mind.)

Introduce kids to the EDP and discuss. Good LINK for getting started…
Read the book “If I Built a Car” by Chris Van Dusen. Discuss.
Students should then build 2 wheel balloon cars. LINK Use mints for wheels! So smart!
After balloon cars have been built and tested, students should then figure out ways to improve upon them. They can make them faster, more precise, flashier, etc. They can use anything in the Makerspace area, including littleBits. The wheels need to stay Lifesavers. Everything else can be adjusted. Students should consciously work through the EDP
Present and test cars

Students should work on www.code.org at an appropriate level.
After students have successfully completed their coding work, they will code Spheros, Sphero Minis, MBlock and Dash Robots. Projects Pending

“Education should prepare young people for jobs that do not yet exist, using technologies that have not yet been invented, to solve problems of which we are not yet aware.” -Richard Riley

Science Enrichment