Strawbees and Campus Tours

Every year, we do an activity with the 8th grader classes that come in for campus tours.  The goal for our part is to highlight our school's focus on STEM (science technology engineering and math) or now STEAM (science technology engineering arts and math), as well as the collaborative aspect of our school projects.  With the new maker lab, we decided to to make use of some of our equipment, Strawbees.  Strawbees are plastic hinges of various sizes meant to fit in the ends of straws, which can be used to build 3D objects that can move, spin, etc.  From their website: 

    Strawbee presentation from Strawbees on Vimeo.  

We gave the kids an instruction sheet, 15 bendy straws, 15 straight straws (surprisingly hard to find), a pair of scissors and two sheets of the Strawbees. 

Supplies. Photo by MCHS LLC.

Working in teams of three or four, the students were challenged to come up with the tallest structure in 15 minutes. In addition, we had a prize for most creative, as voted by our Link Crew.  

Tallest structure.  Photo by MCHS LLC

Link Crew voted on the most creative structure because "it spins." 

Most creative structure. Photo by MCHS LLC

The 8th grade tour group had a lot of fun building the structures, and the excitement among Link Crew suggests our current students will enjoy Strawbees as well.

Happy Making!