Encinal School students get involved with engineering at a Build It Festival

Students in grades second through fifth  at Encinal School in Atherton had an engineering event on Monday, with a Build It Festival from the Lawrence Hall of Sciences and an animation studio.

Students constructed towers, bridges, and support structures, using their creativity, design skills, and spacial reasoning to build in both two and three dimensions. Students worked in flexible cooperative groups to discover tessellations, symmetry and asymmetry, proportion and geometry.

Fourth graders built parachutes and buildings to withstand earthquake tables, third graders made sun prints, scribble bots and launched pop rockets, and fifth graders competed in the circle of pong from the Tech Museum and a design challenge with Little Bit kits from the San Mateo County Office of Education.

“I liked the electronics!” said second grader Matthew Teeple. “I liked how we practiced for when we’re older using electronics to fix stuff. I learned when you’re making a fan, you can’t just do it one way, you can do it lots of ways. ”

The Encinal PTO and Menlo Park-Atherton Education Foundation funded the day with  support from Principal SharonBurns. Grades K-2 had their engineering day on Jan 11th.

InMenlo contributing photographer Gina Hart captured the students’ activities.