Simple Machines and Rube Goldberg Inventions

I love science. I love teaching science. But sometimes it takes a lot of extra time and planning to make great science lessons. We are currently working on our Force and Motion unit and we just learned about simple machines. I introduced them with this shutterfold foldable.

Together we took notes on each of the simple machines and coming up with examples of each. Then, I showed them these Rube Goldberg inspired videos:

Honda's "The Cog" video - a Rube Goldberg invention made entirely of (CGI) car parts. 

"The Page Turner"

Ok Go's "This Too Shall Pass" music video. 

And just released this week...

"Girls" from GoldiBlox

I explained to the class about Rube Goldberg and his inventions and showed them his Pencil Sharpener. Warning: some of his inventions are not quite school appropriate (i.e. smoking/alcohol), so preview them before showing kiddos. 

We were inspired to design our own inventions. I encouraged them to use at least three simple machines in their inventions. Here just a few of the creative ideas from my class. 

I was out for two days last week at a district training and my kids finished these up with the (amazing) substitute. I was very impressed with their thoughtful and creative inventions, and they were all excited about them as well. I added the Simple Machines Shutterfold to my TpT store for anyone interested in adding these to their Interactive Science Notebooks.