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Fall STEAM Challenge - Leaf Lift! 🍁
Welcome to our Fall STEAM Challenge!
While hiking through the forest, you’ve stumbled upon an incredible discovery — a patch of ancient golden leaves buried under the autumn trees. These leaves are fragile artifacts, treasures from long ago.
But here’s the problem: they are too delicate to pick up with your hands. If you try, they might crumble!
Your mission:
Invent a Leaf Lift machine that can carefully raise the leaves off the ground without breaking or bending them. Use your engineering skills to design, test, and improve your lifter.
The world is counting on you to safely recover these rare golden leaves and unlock the secrets they hold. Can you complete the mission?
Objective: Students will design a device to lift a "leaf" using limited materials - exploring basic concepts of force, balance, and simple machines.
Students must build a device that can lift the leaf at least 6 inches off the ground without touching the leaf directly with their hands.
Many students will try to just "shovel" it up - this is ok for younger students, but for older students we want them to think beyond that.
Extension: It must also move the leaf from one place to another (such as from the "forest floor" to a "collection basket") using only the device.
This activity should be done multiple times. Once they try to lift it, they should analyze how successful their design is and see if they can redesign it to be a better lift design.
Helpful Links:
Watch some videos about simple machines to help them get some ideas of the device they might want to make:
Simple Machines: Levers (2:45)
What is a Lever: Acrobatic Science for Kids (5:45) (more about equilibrium)
Simple Machines for Kids (7:00)
Possible Materials:
Craft sticks (different sizes)
Plastic spoons or small paper plates
Tape (scotch, masking, blue, etc.) or Glue
Scissors
Rubber Bands
Straws, Pipe Cleaners, String/yarn
Leaf Cutouts (various sizes) or Leaves from outside
Small weights or counters (coins, beans, buttons)
Where can you get materials (other than purchasing it all yourself)?
Ask students to each bring in something
Ask parents to donate items
Science Center - I can give you many of these basic items! Just give me a bit of notice...
See if anything is already in your school's STEAM Lab
Leaf Cutouts:
https://onelittleproject.com/leaf-template/ 21 different leaves - all free templates
https://worldofprintables.com/leaf-template/ 37 leaf templates - all free
Don't forget about the Engineering Design Process! Give them time to IMPROVE their designs, to TEST them out, and SHARE their results!
Engineers and scientists and many other people in multiple industries do this all the time!
This is also a great time to talk about FAILURE!
Failure is part of life! Failure is OK and good for us! Famous people, inventors, heroes, and more FAIL all the time! We would never improve if we didn't fail!
Extensions:
Students can continue to adjust their designs to lift the leaf higher, or with less effort. If they were required to move it to a different location, make the location further away.
Careers:
Mechanical Engineer: They design and build machines or devices, like automated systems used in factories or recycling plants.
Agricultural Engineer: Specializes in designing machinery for farming, including systems for different types of crops or beans.
Arborist: A professional specializing in the care and management of individual trees, shrubs, and other woody plants.
Environmental Scientist: They study the environment and how humans impact it, working to protect natural resources and public health
Forestry Technician: They assist professional foresters in managing forest resources, ensuring the sustainability of forests for future generations
Archaeologist: A scientist who studies the human past by examining material remains like artifacts, structures, and landscapes
Share with parents or during STEAM Night! Have students show how they made their lifting devices. Maybe even set up a station for the families to try to make their own!
See the STEM Challenge Resources page for:
More on the Engineering Design Process
Planning Tools
Pre and Post Activity Ideas
Don't forget to REFLECT!
Don't forget to REFLECT!
Questions to ask the students:
What was the most effective design? Why?
Was there something that worked well for each group?
Is there a material that would have worked well that we didn't have?
What frustrated you about this challenge?
If we did this challenge again in a month, what would you do differently?
How well do you think your group collaborated, cooperated, and communicated to each other?
How was this challenge about perseverance?
Why Reflect in STEM?
Why Reflect in STEM?
Reflection in STEM is essential to both student understanding and teacher evaluation of students’ learning. Reflecting helps students make connections, understand their successes and failures, and become aware of their learning. Reflections help teachers identify where different students are in their learning process.
MOST IMPORTANTLY - HAVE FUN!!!
K–2 NGSS Connections
K–2 NGSS Connections
K-PS2-1 – Pushes & pulls can change the motion of an object.
K-2-ETS1-1 – Ask questions and define a simple design problem.
K-2-ETS1-2 – Develop simple sketches/models to show how the device works.
K-2-ETS1-3 – Test and compare different solutions.
3–5 NGSS Connections
3–5 NGSS Connections
3-PS2-1 – Balanced and unbalanced forces affect motion.
3-5-ETS1-1 – Define a problem with criteria & constraints.
3-5-ETS1-2 – Generate and compare multiple solutions.
3-5-ETS1-3 – Plan and carry out tests to improve a design.
Middle School NGSS Connections
Middle School NGSS Connections
MS-PS2-2 – Predict patterns of motion using Newton’s laws.
MS-ETS1-2 – Evaluate competing design solutions.
MS-ETS1-3 – Analyze data from tests to determine best characteristics of a design.
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