The first question I always get from 3rd graders in my IDEA Lab class is "Can we eat the marshmallow?" And I always respond the same way, "If you have one marshmallow and you eat it, how many marshmallows do you have left?" "Zero!" they yell out. This is a good lesson, not just in appreciating what you have but also in terms of constraints. They have several constraints for this challenge: (1) limited materials and time, (2) they must work in groups of two or three, (3) they can only touch the spoon and the marshmallow when launching their catapult.
I start by introducing the process of Design Thinking that originated at IDEO and Stanford's d.school:
I start by introducing the process of Design Thinking that originated at IDEO and Stanford's d.school:
Students are familiar with the concept of empathy from our Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculum. So they understand what it means to stand in someone else's shoes and to look at a problem from someone else's perspective or needs. This project doesn't require much empathy since they are designing the product for themselves (and to some extent for me and their homeroom teacher). The define step is also easy here: I give them constraints and define the challenge: to build a catapult that can fling a marshmallow a long distance.
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