STEMdad3
Member
Hello Everybody!
I suppose this is an introduction and a sharing post all in one. I'm a 34yo BAR. Built and flew a couple Estes kits in Jr. High and then didn't touch a rocket again until 2 1/2 years ago when my son and daughter got interested, and in 2.5 years have gone from an Estes Hi Flier to a Madcow 4" Patriot (that will hopefully get me my NAR Lvl 1 soon...)
Along with building rockets with my kids I also run an after school program and a couple STEM special interest clubs through 4-H. This spring I, along with a dozen High School mentors, will be helping a group of 40 middle school and Jr. High students (grades 4-8) build and launch Estes Vikings as part of the after school program. As part of this unit, I've made up a YouTube series so that the youth aren't coming in to the project blind. I'm gonna post it here, if anyone wants to watch it and give me some feedback, it would be much appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl-HngptRCbPc2ua_vQbSUw/playlists
A couple things to note:
This series is meant specifically for the after school group, so several times I refer to myself or the mentors helping out.
Also, I am having them sand each fin individually on purpose. The thought is that they can sand one fin, glue it on, and while the glue is setting up start working on the next fin. Since they work in groups of 4-5 and share a glue bottle in each group, this will kill enough time in between each fin that they won't be knocking off one fin while attaching the next (hopefully...)
This build is set up to take up about 2.5 sessions with each session being ~1.5 hours.
Let me know what you think, and feel free to use this with your own group of youth if you want!
Thanks All!
-Aaron
I suppose this is an introduction and a sharing post all in one. I'm a 34yo BAR. Built and flew a couple Estes kits in Jr. High and then didn't touch a rocket again until 2 1/2 years ago when my son and daughter got interested, and in 2.5 years have gone from an Estes Hi Flier to a Madcow 4" Patriot (that will hopefully get me my NAR Lvl 1 soon...)
Along with building rockets with my kids I also run an after school program and a couple STEM special interest clubs through 4-H. This spring I, along with a dozen High School mentors, will be helping a group of 40 middle school and Jr. High students (grades 4-8) build and launch Estes Vikings as part of the after school program. As part of this unit, I've made up a YouTube series so that the youth aren't coming in to the project blind. I'm gonna post it here, if anyone wants to watch it and give me some feedback, it would be much appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl-HngptRCbPc2ua_vQbSUw/playlists
A couple things to note:
This series is meant specifically for the after school group, so several times I refer to myself or the mentors helping out.
Also, I am having them sand each fin individually on purpose. The thought is that they can sand one fin, glue it on, and while the glue is setting up start working on the next fin. Since they work in groups of 4-5 and share a glue bottle in each group, this will kill enough time in between each fin that they won't be knocking off one fin while attaching the next (hopefully...)
This build is set up to take up about 2.5 sessions with each session being ~1.5 hours.
Let me know what you think, and feel free to use this with your own group of youth if you want!
Thanks All!
-Aaron