Swing Set Makeover: STEM Road Map for Elementary School, Grade 3

What if you could challenge your third graders to design playground equipment that safely meets their own standards for fun? Swing Set Makeover helps students understand the science behind the play structures they regularly use as they work to create new and improved playground designs. Student teams will survey existing types of playground equipment, compare them for both safety and fun factors, build models of their proposed designs, and write blogs to summarize the improvements. Along the way, they’ll learn about motion, forces, and geometric shapes; collect data using mathematical tools; record data with line plots and bar graphs; and use the engineering design process.