Day 13 - Chobe JSS & Rameaba Primary

The first half of our day was spent at Chobe JSS, where we delivered four of our workshops, beginning with the aircraft launchers. The students built their aeroplanes before designing their very own launching boards for the optimal launch angle and speed! The results were so creative with groups improvising with resources they had found lying around as well as the provided ones from us, and everyone loved racing the planes in a wee competition.

Next up was the Product Design Engineering-based workshop, life on Mars. Here, the students worked in teams to design solutions and create a poster for living on the planet Mars. The students were given a list of problems humans would encounter on Mars, such as temperature and pressure, and designed brilliantly creative inventions to overcome them. We saw thermal blankets, heating systems, sandstorm shelters, genetically engineered trees, and so many more. It was wonderful to see the students collaborating and combining what they had learned so far in their studies with their creativity.

We followed this activity with the prosthetic hand workshop, where the students created their very own working hand models that could hold a ball using only paper, straws and string. This is a brilliant hands-on workshop that was thoroughly enjoyed by the students.

Our final workshop at Chobe was the hydraulic lift. This is our most complex workshop, and the senior students did a fantastic job problem solving and following the instructions to create a working cardboard hydraulic scissor lift powered by an air-filled syringe!

We packed up, and said goodbye to Chobe Junior Secondary School, and made our way to Rameaba Primary School. Here, we had a lovely afternoon talking to the children about all of the different engineering disciplines before introducing them to a workshop. In groups, the students made aircraft launchers! This activity requires a lot of problem solving and creativity, and even though this was a younger group of children, they did exceptionally well. The level of detail was amazing, and the results were incredibly successful!