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Project challenge:

Popcorn Catapult

Suggested Ages: K – 2nd Grades

Air pop takes on a whole new meaning with this popcorn launching device! BE COLLABORATIVE as you build a simple catapult from common household items. Then take turns serving popcorn to your construction collaborator…from a distance.

Engaging Design-It-Yourself projects to inspire young innovators

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

 

Every Galileo Design-It-Yourself Challenge teaches the same techniques and mindsets that professional designers an engineers, artists and chefs use in their work. With skills like these, we believe you can change the world.

Get Involved—For Grown Ups

Materials list:

Help your child find these materials or a close substitute: 

 

  • 2 large cooking or serving spoons (try different spoons to find a suitable combination—see video)
  • Tape
  • Small bite-sized food (popped corn, mini marshmallows, carrot slices, etc.)

 

Activity Steps:

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

 

    1. Find at least one other person to help you with this project challenge.
    2. Find suitable spoons for the fulcrum and lever.
    3. Be collaborative by working with your partner connect the spoons using tape
    4. Test the tape connection to make sure it will hold.
    5. Be collaborative by working with your partner to secure the spoon launcher to the floor with a tape hinge.
    6. Test the hinge to make sure it will hold.
    7. Test your catapult by launching popcorn to your partner.
    8. Keep redesigning, and building on each other’s ideas, until you have a strong catapult that launches the popcorn high enough into the air to catch it.

 

Guiding Questions:

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

 

  • How might you collaborate with your partner to share the jobs of taping and holding the materials in place?
  • What is and isn’t working with your catapult? How might you redesign it to work better? Do you need different materials? Different placement? Different taping techniques?

 

More Ideas:

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

 

  • Step it up! Invent a launching game (Example: See how many times in a row your team can launch and catch the popcorn. Or try to launch popcorn into a bowl.)
  • Innovate on! Make a second catapult and pass popcorn back and forth

 

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: 

 

  • When your catapult didn’t work quite right, what did you do need to do to fix it? How did you get that idea?
  • While you were building, what’s one way you helped by being collaborative? How did your partner help? How do you think this might have gone if you were working alone?

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 video of your kids using their catapult (submissions of slomo failed catches in the mouth gladly accepted) 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!