Engineering in practice - dominoes and picture frames

We've been watching fascinating videos from the website The Kid Should See This, which is full of videos made for adults but appropriate for children, on all sorts of topics from nature to math to space and technology. One of our kindergarteners discovered this video, and shared it with the rest of the class. The kids asked to watch it three times, and were instantly fascinated by the idea of dominoes! So I brought out the dominoes and they spent the next half hour trying to construct their own domino designs!

Here is the video we watched. I especially like the end of the video, which has outtakes - we talked about how oftentimes you need to fail many times when building something difficult, before you'll be successful.

And here are pictures of the kids working on their domino creations. An awesome example of perseverance and cooperation!

And another awesome example of perseverance and cooperation came when one of our students' parents brought in build-your-own picture frame kits! He gave the kindergarteners their own hammers, safety goggles, and nails/screws, as well as the instruction page for how to put them together. I was so impressed with how patiently the kids worked on putting them together. Many of them intuitively knew what to do and/or could read the instructions page more successfully than the adults who were helping them! It was a lot of fun and another great example of what kids can do when you give them the tools to create.