Clay Wars

As a way of getting to know the properties of clay, we had clay wars today.  The students were broken into teams and given a challenge.  Then they had one minute to determine a plan with their group and three minutes for the challenge.  After, the students reflected to how the clay reacted during the challenge.  The challenge reinforced basic hand building techniques and the students made a lot of great connections about the elasticity of the clay. Our challenges were: Who could make the tallest freestanding structure, who could make the longest coil, who could make a perfect sphere, and who could make a balanced cube.