Materials list:

Help your child find these materials or a close substitute: 

For making the bionic hand:

• Soft plastic recyclables (yogurt container, milk jug, etc.)
• Straws (or make your own from paper rolled around a pencil and taped in place)
• Cord (string, yarn, etc.)
• Sturdy handle (paint stirrer, spare ruler, long strips of cardboard taped together, etc.)
• Masking tape
• Scissors
• Corrugated cardboard scraps—for creating the ‘palm’

For testing the hand:

• Paper wad and trash can
• Lightweight paper cup or plastic water bottle and water
• Popcorn or bite-sized snack food

Activity Steps:

Use these to keep your innovator on track as they create: 

1. 1. Create a finger—use soft plastic strips, straws, tape and string.
   2. Create a cardboard  ‘palm’ and tape it to the handle.
   3. Tape a finger to the palm.
   4. Create and attach more fingers to create a visionary hand.
   5. Test your bionic hand by trying to throw away a piece of trash, take a drink of water, and eat a piece of popcorn.
   6. Redesign to meet all three challenges by creating or removing fingers, rearranging the fingers, or operating the hand in a different way. Stay determined and be visionary!

Guiding Questions:

If your child is stuck, try asking these questions to help them keep on innovating: 

• What’s another way you could create or arrange the fingers that you haven’t tried yet? Have you tried longer fingers? Shorter fingers? Changing the spacing between straws on a finger?
• Look closely at the hand as you try each challenge – Which fingers are actually grabbing something and which fingers aren’t contributing yet? How might you redesign to get a better grip?

More Ideas:

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

• Is the project too difficult? Try just focusing on the trash-throwing challenge and start with two long fingers!
• Have a hot glue gun? Use hot glue and tape for extra strong bionic hands! Just make sure to use the hot glue only AFTER experimenting with different ideas and finalizing your fingers.
• Innovate On! Invent your own challenges. Try putting on a hat, build a special dog-petting attachment, or eating some dry cereal with a spoon! Redesign your bionic hands as needed (or create specialized hands) to accomplish each task.

Wrap Up Questions:

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

• What challenge (trash challenge, drinking challenge, popcorn challenge) was difficult at first, and how did you redesign your hand to achieve it?
• What is visionary about your bionic hand (something you imagined that didn’t exist before)? How did you get your visionary idea?

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 picture of your bionic hand or a video of you completing your favorite challenge 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!