3 Engineering Activities in 3 Branches of Engineering

As it is British Science Week this week, my local Home Education Group run an annual Science Fair.
Last year, this was the last thing we went to before Lockdown, and this year it's all online.  Due to my background, I was asked if I could do something 'engineeringy' and I've decided to share it with you in case you find it useful.

I've split this up into an Introduction to Engineering plus three dives into different branches of engineering.  I would guesstimate that each branch of engineering (Introduction Video, Specific Video plus 3 activities) would take approximately an hour each, but obviously it depends on the age of the child, their concentration/persistence levels and how interested they are; and I'd only expect you to watch the introduction video once. 

I anticipate that most KS2/3/4 can do all the practicals (KS1 can with help) and KS3/4 can do the worksheets (KS2 with help). Each video is only short, so please pause it after each section and come back to it before starting the next activity.

I am not a natural presenter, and you can see that talking to a screen is not natural for me.  I also had to learn some very basic video-editing skills, so please forgive the lack of professionalism.  Even simple things like keeping my hands in one place, meant there's various continuity errors, lol.  And finally, in order to publish everything on this blog, I had to learn how to attach pdfs to blogger and create a YouTube account!  Despite my engineering background (honestly, I do have a Masters from Oxford in it) I'm a bit of a technophobe and very old skool - I've only been using Google Docs for the past month or so!

As there are practicals for you to do at home, you may want to check that you have the necessary materials/supplies listed below before you start; they are all available at a supermarket, if you don't have them at home already.

Video Transcript, if needed, HERE

**Please Note: Some mobile devices are not showing the videos correctly or at all.  You will either need to switch to the Web Version (there's a tiny button at the bottom of the post) or watch the videos directly from YouTube: https://youtu.be/Rp4kgGoukKY

Introduction to Engineering

Print out Word Search HERE

Civil Engineering

(a) spaghetti and marshmallows or jelly tots

(b) 50+ straws, sticky tape, sheets of paper, glue stick, pen

(c) print out worksheet and separate answers HERE

Mechanical Engineering

(a) 2 kitchen roll tubes (or more toilet roll tubes, to make it taller); 1 straw, string/ribbon, yoghurt pot or paper box

(b) print out picture of cogs HERE, stick to thick cardboard (as thick as possible - it will be even easier to do if you have 3 or four sheets of card stuck together) and cut out shapes; 4 kitchen roll tubes, 2 straws, string/ribbon, yoghurt pot

(c) print out worksheet and separate answers HERE

Electrical Engineering

(a) print out sheets of paper circuits HERE and cut them out, or make your own plus print out of Video Answers HERE

(b) D batteries (perhaps taken from a torch), aluminium foil, electrical tape, light bulb (perhaps taken from a torch)

(c) print out worksheet and separate answers HERE