Engineering with The Gingerbread Man

We are knee deep in our next fairy tale engineering unit....The Gingerbread Man. Our initial focus was on retelling the story and creating a Double Bubble Map comparing two versions of the story. After this, we delved into a discussion about how the story could have had a happier ending had the Gingerbread Man thought of a different way to cross the stream. This was perfect because it got the scholars ready for their engineering problem.

The Problem: How can we as engineers design a way to help the Gingerbread Man cross the river without getting wet?

We Imagined: a zip line, jet pack to fly across, stepping stones to run or hop across, a boat, a bridge or even find a way to go around.

Next we Asked: 

What do we know:  GBM cannot swim, GBM will fall apart if he gets wet, cannot trust an animal or person for help

What we need to know:  How big/heavy is the GBM, how wide is the river, what materials will sink or float, best plan and how to build.

From here, we turned our attention back to the Imagine and decided on the best ideas: zip line, bridge or boat. The scholars then decided on the idea/plan they wanted to engineer.

Next came materials. We came up with 8 different materials that could be used by one or all of our ideas. We spent time discussing how we might use each material in the different designs.

Now, the scholars were ready to draw their designs and make their material selections.