How I spent my summer vacation
Trapping toads, learning engineering “The cane toad is still on the loose. Can you design a machine to help us trap it?”
famous in the 1920s. Many of the students’ toad traps operated on a similar chain-reaction principle.
them understand that critical thinking and creativity are as important to the job as math skills.
Students at Tully Elementary’s Engineering Adventures camp received that message from two (fictional) teens who accidently let cane toads loose in Australia, where the toads are an invasive species.
One trap included a weight that slid down a rope to knock over a box that fell over to catch the toad. Another included a bag of flour that hit a board and knocked off a weight at the other end, which released a rope holding up a towel that then fell on the toad.
The camp, held in June and August, also “reinforced regular classroom lessons and took them to a higher level,” says Tully Learning Lab teacher Laura Keeling.
The Tully students used the engineering design process—ask, imagine, plan, create, improve—to develop toad traps that could be activated from 5 feet away. For inspiration, the campers studied the elaborately engineered machines that Rube Goldberg made
“You have to be good at thinking and imagining” to build a good toad trap, says Tully student Jack Huff, who wants to be a professional engineer one day—which shows that the camp was accomplishing two of its goals: to encourage students to become engineers and to help
She was selected to lead one of only ten national pilot program sites for Engineering Adventures, a program created by the Engineering is Elementary team at the Museum of Science, Boston. Keeling also has developed a partnership with the University of Louisville (UofL) Speed School of Engineering. Professor Gary