Family Engineering: Wildlife Crossing

Full Program Description

Brainstorm, design, build, and test structures to solve problems and help make the world a better place – just like real engineers! For the last 500 years, Incans have been building and rebuilding the Q’eswachaka suspension bridge that crosses a deep river gorge using woven mountain grasses. This bridge is just one of many along the 25,000 mile Great Inca Road. In this program, you will put your bridge-building skills to the test by creating a model bridge that animals could use to help them safely cross roads. 

Supplies and setup

• I placed pages from Wildlife Crossings: Protecting Animal Pathways Around the World by Catherine Barr and Christiane Engel around the room. There are approximately a bajillion Wildlife Crossings books out these days!
• I did not create or set out specific instructions for this program. I briefly introduced the activity: Using a picture from the book, I explained that we share our world with animals, and sometimes our roads and buildings make it hard for them to stay safe. Then I invited families to read the pages around the room to learn about some different ways people have created safe ways for animals and people to live together safely. Once they’d finished (some families looked at all the examples; some just a few), I showed them the toy animals and asked which animal they’d like to borrow and build a wildlife crossing for today using the supplies. I also mentioned that they could get some inspiration from the video (linked below) if they liked, plus I had a bunch of books that they could reference.
• I looped this video from the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian documenting the amazing bridge-building tradition of the Q’eswachaka suspension bridge.
• The slideshow below could also be used for this program, though I hope to further diversify it before I use it again, and add photos such as the Q’eswachaka suspension bridge.
• Arrange tables or chairs so they are spaced a couple of feet apart.
• Items for building, such as craft sticks, paper plates, recycled cardboard tubes, cut-up cereal boxes, straws, and other materials.
• Tape.
• “Live weight” to test the bridge’s strength (I used magnetic tiles).
• Toy animals – I used plastic miniature animals, but you could bring out fingerpuppets, stuffed animals, or cut out photos of animals and tape them onto blocks.
• For further information, see this source file from the Tech Interactive.

Reflections

• Kids and grown-ups quickly and excitedly engaged in this activity. While the project was presented in a drop-in format for families, it could work very well for a kids-only grade school program.

• This program provided representation for Hispanic heritage and indigenous peoples, but could be run any time of the year.