I love using materials that are cheap and easy to find for science projects. In a world full of online shopping and shipping, cardboard is king! Instead of sending your packaging straight to composting, let it take a tour of your classroom.
There are so many standards that can be covered with cardboard building projects: defining engineering problems, developing possible solutions, and optimizing a design solution just for starters. Here's how to transform this humble material into science classroom gold.
📦 Got different types of cardboard? Use a bridge-building project to compare corrugated fiberboard to paperboard, or paper-towel tubes to card stock. Students can test which materials and design ideas can hold the most mass. Hold a tower-building competition to test which material can create the tallest tower with the lowest mass.
📦 Marble runs! Your class can explore gravity, speed, and friction. Use paper towel tubes cut in half, or have students make tubes out of thin cardboard. You can add constraints, like a maximum height, and budgeting - make students "pay" for the amount of cardboard they want to use. They'll love the shopping aspect!
📦 Biology and chemistry experiments. Students can make small, portable soil containers out of cardboard and investigate factors that impact plant growth. They can put cardboard into different wet and dry environments to see how it biodegrades over time, or watch it break down in a lab when exposed to water, vinegar, heat, etc. If you're really adventurous, you can start a worm farm. (Not for the faint of heart; you'll need time and materials beyond cardboard, for sure!)
📦 Get artistic. Cardboard makes a great art material, too, so you can let your creative students shine! You can assign different biomes to different groups and have students model the biotic and abiotic factors in dioramas. Students can create life-size body cut-outs and layer different body systems on top. Make topographic maps by stacking layers of shaped cardboard, or create a model of the solar system with cut-outs of the planets.
📦 Safe cutting. Making clean, straight cuts with cardboard is tough with a pair of scissors, and box cutters aren't exactly safe for elementary students, but these serrated edge tools will help your students get great cuts. Don't forget eye protection and plastic cutting mats, too.
Bring on the cardboard science!
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