In November 2017, we headed out with the WBRL to the Anzac Community School to do our final READesign Challenge of 2017! We had a younger group of kids aged 5-7, but they still had a blast, reading books and coming up with fun engineering solutions using electrical kits, wheels and tons of crafts!

In total, we had approx. 14 kids, who worked in teams and read a few different books. One book chosen was The Whale in My Swimming Pool. As the title suggests, in the book, there is a whale stuck in the swimming pool in the backyard! The big problem is how to get it out so we can swim! The kids came up with a pulley system that could lift that whale out.

A classic favorite is Iggy Peck, Architect and the kids looked at solutions for when Izzy’s class get’s stuck on a island. In the book, Iggy makes a bridge, but in the class, the kids made a sailboat from plates, dowels and other crafts.

Another book they read was Jack and the Beanstalk and the French Fries. A spin on the classic tale, Jack is so upset that they have to eat so many beans all the time after he grows a giant beanstalk. He has to come up with a way to get rid of all of those beans, or climb up the beanstalk for another solutions. Some students used wheels to make little wagons to transport the beans to market. Some others tried making little hot air balloons to carry Jack to the top of the beanstalk!

All of the kids had a great time building awesome solutions for their storybook characters. I can’t wait to see what the WBRL kids get up to in 2018!