Nov 26, 2013

The Marshmallow Spaghetti Challenge

It was the day before Thanksgiving vacation, excitement was high in the classroom.  What's a teacher to do with all that energy?? 




 Time for a group building activity!!  The challenge was to build the highest free-standing structure using 20 pieces of spaghetti, a yard of tape and string, and one marshmallow which had to be on the top of the structure.  Students were not allowed to eat or break up the marshmallow in any way.  Oh and by the way, they only had 18 minutes to do this. 
 Competition was fierce, and for a while it looked like we might have lots of little spaghetti all over the floor and no standing structures!  I don't think any of us realized just how delicate those pasta pieces are.  Winners are pictures on the left.  congratulations to everyone, great TEAM  work!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Mrs.McLean's Class,
Why did it have to be ONLY 18 minutes? Couldn't it have been at least 20 minutes? I like how HL21 looks like, 'Don't fall! I want to eat you Marshmallow Man!' Great job, everyone. Congratulations Liv4, Sparkle12, JumpinJ and (let's not forget) HL21. Wow, must have been tempting to eat the marshmallow during that time, wasn't it? What was the hardest part to make it? In my group is was to keep it up. Please reply back, Mrs. McLean's Class.
Sincerely, Bling Dog.

Ms. McLean's 4th grade class said...

Good question BlingDog! Ok everybody, what was the hardest thing about this challenge? Was it working with your group and agreeing on a strategy? Was it dealing with that fragile spaghetti? Or not eating the marshmallow? what did you struggle with?

Sincerely,
Ms.Mc

Matthew said...

It looked like it was fierce and hard to make that in only 18 minutes! I think you should of gave them more spaghetti than 20 threads of spaghetti and that is why there was no structure standing.