Creating Catpults

A great lesson to follow up the Simple Machines lesson is to have students use their knowledge of levers to create catapults.

The purpose of the lesson is to apply what they know about simple machines and levers and learn by doing.

The following worksheets have been created for this lesson.

Teacher may use a target with points labeled on it. For my class, we used sidewalk chalk to create the target and students placed their catapult two feet away from the target.

Catapult Competition
Catapult Student Planning Sheet
Catapult Competition Recording Sheet

Simple Machine Photo Scavenger Hunt

Today you are going to do a photo scavenger hunt for simple machines around the school.

The purpose of this activity is so that you can identify different types of simple machines that are used in every day life and explain how they make our lives easier.

In order to complete this assignment you will need to do the following:
1) Download Instagram

2) Open the Google Doc and copy it to your drive. Label it with Class.Name.Photo Scavenger Hunt.

3) Fill out the document as you walk around with your partner on the scavenger hunt.

4) As you find your simple machines and document them, make sure that you use tag it with the hashtag for Ms. Henning's website henningzclass and also with what simple machine it is.

FOR EXAMPLE: #henningzclass #lever #simplemachines

NOTE: When you hashtag something you must include the # (number sign) and DO NOT USE spaces.

5) Answer the questions at the end of the hunt.

6) Have so much fun!!