Toys that Teach

ASEE Prism, Mar 2004 by Mulrine, Anna

Teachers are discovering that toys like Slinkys and yo-yo's may be better than books when it comes to teaching kids about engineering.

SHERRA KERNS RECALLS THE day her daughter, then 6 years old, came to her one Saturday to say she wanted to get something from the top shelf of a tall closet. Kerns followed her into the room and sat down in the middle of the floor. She asked her daughter how they were going to tackle the project. "Certainly I didn't want to do something to compromise her safety," she says.

She supervised her daughter as she considered using a table as a stepping stool. "I asked her, OK, what's the best way to move it over to the closet? Do you get behind it and shove it, or do you push it?'" Next, they tried a stool. She asked her daughter, "Are you going to fall? Why don't you rock it and see if it's steady?" Kerns and her daughter spent hours on the project. "It's amazing the sense of achievement that kids get from realizing they have created something that makes them a little more autonomous-it's really a feeling of power."

Today, Kerns is vice president for innovation and research at Olin College in Needham, Mass., and president elect of ASEE. Through her experience with her daughter, and countless students over the years, Kerns has become convinced that immersing children in the world of engineering should begin at an early age. "I think young children arc natural engineers-if you've ever seen a 2 year-old figure out how to reach a countertop to get a cookie. They will move things into place, create structures and piles, test them for stability-it really is an engineering kind of a problem."

Kerns believes that toys and tools-whether used in pursuit of countertop cookies, building forts, or playing with silly putty-can stimulate the engineering instinct in children. "In part, our educational system doesn't identify activities as engineering-teachers don't say, 'Gee, you know what you just did was an engineering kind of a thing. Those abilities aren't always recognized and stimulated in our children.'"

Today, however, select programs around the country are showing teachers how to do just that. Mamie Moy is a founder of the SMART (Science and Math Applied Resources for Teachers) program at the University of Houston. Toys, she says, are the key to making science and engineering more approachable-for both students and teachers. "It's science that's being taught with very friendly things," says Moy, also a professor of chemistry at the university. "You mention toys and they're not afraid of it. Yo-yo's, Slinkys-nobody's afraid of those. You mention a fulcrum, and immediately people freeze."

Moy scours dime stores for all sorts of toys and gadgets that she can use in the workshops she runs, which teach teachers how to share science with their students. Recently, she began offering workshops for the parents of elementary and middle schoolers, so they could learn how to get their kids excited about science concepts. "We're always on the lookout for fun, practical things," she says. To illustrate wave function, for example, she uses Slinkys. "You just wave it, and see how it bobs up and down. That way, you can see wave function. You can make it go as fast as you want to, and make the frequency as great-or as short or long-as you want."

Moy also taught her students how to make that 70's toy classic -Shrinky Dinks-and they learned some important science principles in the process. The kids gathered clear, plastic deli trays ("You can use the styrofoam ones, she says, but they're not as dramatic"). They cut flat pieces and measured their surface area and weight. "Then we heat it, it shrinks, and we mass it again. Has it lost any mass? Has the surface area decreased? Then we do the percentage of shrinkage. It's very easy. We use toaster ovens, and we can also ask how much energy we needed to use to shrink it." Depending on the time of year and season, the shrinky dink science projects also make good gifts-we do Halloween decorations, tree ornaments, mothers day hearts," she says.

Likewise, the students play with yo-yo's to learn about spin and mechanics, and silly putty to discuss polymers. "It's not that easy to talk about polymer science," Moy says. "But we can deal with products that are polymers, and, of course, environmentally, we have a lot of discussion going on with plastics and polymers. What are the benefits? Can we live without plastics? Then we find out our body is just full of polymers-proteins, sugars, carbs, skin-these are all polymers. It's just an understanding of what it is - and what role science plays in their lives."

Sometimes, the kids make their own toys-like slime, a combination of Elmer's glue and borax. "When we vary the concentrations of glue, we get different products. If we use it straight out of the container, it's hard and rubbery. If we dilute it, it gets stretchier," Moy explains. The kids can learn what the limits of dilution are in order to get the slime or whatever we're looking for." And the best part: the kids get to keep the slime.