Story and photos by Evelyn Holtz ‘30
The room was filled with excitement and joy. Controlled chaos was spread throughout the room as students explored challenges and discovered new solutions. The Winter Term course, Engineering Challenges, is created and instructed by Dr. Sontheimer, a Middle School Science Teacher. Dr. Sontheimer’s goal in this course was to provide “the freedom for [students] to explore and create without the stress of grades and severe limitations.” This course enables students to utilize their creativity and imagination to tackle a new engineering challenge each day. The students document their thoughts and plans in a detailed engineering notebook to help them develop their ideas.
One of the favorite engineering challenges among the students was a tower challenge. This challenge consisted of a small group of students working together to create the tallest tower with a limited amount of paper, tape, straws, aluminum foil, and time. Nora Lurk ’32 said that the challenges helped make the activities fun, “because of the constraints we only got so much tape and we had to build it really quickly.” These struggles allowed students across both fifth and sixth grade to build a sense of community and embrace challenges, utilizing their creativity.
Another favorite activity among the students was an egg drop challenge. This challenge had small groups of students work together to create a device that would allow an egg to land safely after being dropped from Dr. Sontheimer’s second-story window. Like several of their other challenges, they were forced to stay within the constraints of limited tape, paper, plastic bags, plastic cups, string, and bubble wrap. Riley Stockstill ’33 mentions that the best part of these challenges is the ability to “collaborate and work together as a group to discover new techniques to build a fun solution to the challenge.”
Another highly enjoyed activity was a tower challenge out of toothpicks and marshmallows. The goal was for a small team to build the tallest tower using these materials and still be able to support the weight of a full water bottle.
The small groups were also challenged to design and build a model car that could protect an egg while it rolled down a ramp. With limited materials, this activity forced the students to think outside the box, harnessing their imagination to create something both fun and functional for the challenge. Kennedy Cupp-Enyard ’32 says that one of the best parts of Engineering Challenges is “embracing challenges and working out of [my] comfort zone to achieve a goal with my small group.”
The Engineering Challenges Winter Term course pushes the creativity and imagination of all the students in the course. Every student works in a group to create and learn, developing new ideas to address problems. Cupp-Enyard mentions that she picked the course “because [she] wanted to express [her] creativity through challenges and learn to multitask while trying to work with a team.” Lurk expresses that in Engineering Challenges, she loves “the amount of freedom the class has and the pure fun of the activities and challenges.” Many students found the class extremely rewarding and learned structural balance, embracing challenges, and how to collaborate well with others.