Rollers with Pom Poms and Pebbles
As part of a ongoing experience developing tinkering projects for young learners (roughly ages 3-5 years old) I’ve been connecting with my original WICO collaborator Nicole Catrett to share ideas. One of the things that we’ve been working on remotely has been a new version of ‘roly poly rollers’ or small robots that move in interesting ways depending on the combinations of recycled hubs attached to the spinning points.
Nicole has been combining this activity to an ongoing pom-pom factory experiment by adding little pom-poms to the materials set so that the prototypes that leaners make include more story-telling and playful possibilities. With pom-poms (and pebbles) the explorations are widened to include washing machines, sound makers and color mixers.
I’ve been testing these rollers at my local ‘spielmobil’ group afternoon play sessions and this week I brought some extra materials to add to the activity set.
Despite the challenge of keeping pom poms (and some of the lighter hubs) on the table in a windy environment many kids started exploring the robot rollers and got interested in adding more of the loose elements to the machines. Some of the kids stayed for a long time and I think the addition of the pebbles and pom poms helped them see the infinite possibilities of the materials set. There were unexpected outcomes like different sound rhythms but also really scientific experiments like how much weight to add in one of the containers to make it wobble but still balance.
I also tried a couple of other ideas for the first time including a ‘blank’ block with just a piece of velcro on it that could be used to attach to other materials. I still need to explore a bit more but this piece did inspire one kid to make up a compound roller with two of the bases attached together with velcro.
As I test out the materials, I’m trying to stay back as much as possible to mimic the way this activity might look on the floor of a science center or in the corner of a classroom without constant facilitation. Some of the things that need to be worked on to get to that point include how to keep the loose materials on the table and how to reinforce the little hub so that it’s more sturdy and doesn’t break on the side (so far we’ve tried zip ties and superglue).
It’s really fun to test out this project with local kids and families and I’m excited to share with teachers and educators in a few weeks at the Creative Learning Festival in Milan at the Museo Nazionale Scienza e Tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci.