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active challenge:

Mission: Agility Course

Suggested Ages: K – 5th Grades

Create a series of elaborate security defenses, then sneakily slip your way past them to reach your objective! It’s not easy to avoid all the obstacles, so you’ll need to BE REFLECTIVE by thinking about how to move your body to successfully step over, under, and around each obstacle.

Active Challenge: Fun, movement-oriented games and activities to spark innovation and creativity

This is no ordinary DIY activity for kids: It’s a step toward becoming an innovator.

 

Every Galileo Active Challenge gets kids moving and teaches the same mindsets that professional designers, engineers, artists and athletes use in their work. With skills like these, we believe you can change the world.

Get Involved—For Grown Ups

Materials list:

Find these materials or a close substitute: 

 

  • String
  • Tape
  • Cardboard tubes (or any non-breakable cylindrical object)
  • Paper plates (or any flat and light object like a children’s book)
  • 2 or more large objects (boxes, mats, etc.)

 

Activity GUIDE:

Refer to these steps to keep young innovators on track as they play:

 

Prep support:

Help kids identify an area that can be blocked off for awhile

 

Activity Details:

1. Create obstacles

  • Laser maze—lengths of string taped diagonally across the space
  • Balanced objects—paper plate atop a cardboard tube, etc.
  • Blocades—boxes, cushions, etc.

 

2. Carefully traverse through the obstacles without touching them. Restart after a mistake.

  • As kids make mistakes, support being reflective.
    • Ask: What’s another way you can move past that obstacle that’s giving you trouble?
  • If one part of the mission is impossible.
    • Ask: How can you redesign that part so you can get past it, but it’s still a fun challenge?

 

3. Redesign the course as needed so it’s not too easy and not too difficult.

 

4. Retrieve the stolen treasure and bring it back to the beginning.

 

 

 

More Ideas:

Every project presents opportunities to add your own twists or extensions. Here are some ideas to get you started: 

 

  • Invent your own security defenses such as a chair you need to belly-crawl under or a mini-game you need to complete before moving on!
  • Time trials! How fast can you achieve the goal? Can you beat your previous best time?

 

Wrap Up Questions:

Lock in the learning by asking kids these questions about their activity and how they practiced the featured Innovator’s Mindset element: 

 

  • What was one part of the defenses that was really tricky? How did being reflective help you get past that part?
  • What ideas do you have for other spy agility courses you could make in the future?

Subscribe Now—It’s Free!

 

With so many changes to everyone’s regular routines, we know you’re likely looking for ways to keep your kids learning (and yourself sane) while schools are closed. Subscribe here and Galileo will deliver a week’s work of activities to your inbox every Sunday to add to your routine!

SHARE!

The last step in the Gallieo Innovator’s Process is SHARE. Great learning can come from sharing successes and failures—to solidify your own experience as an innovator and to inspire others.

 

SHARE WITH galileo

 

Take a photo of your security defense course or capture a sped-up video of your mission and share it with the Camp Galileo Anywhere Facebook Community.

 

Share with family and friends

 

Your innovation doesn’t stop with you. Inspire someone else by sharing your project challenge—maybe they’ll try it themselves or maybe your project will give them a new idea.

 

  • Who: someone in your house, a family member, a friend
  • How: in person, on the phone, online
  • When: anytime, starting now!