Teams of fourth-grade students from Jacksonwald, Lorane and Owatin Creek dreamt up new innovations to solve modern-day problems using just K'Nex building pieces, teamwork, and a whole lotta brain power during the 2024 BCIU STEM Design Challenge held this week at the Berks County Intermediate Unit. The design competition challenges teams of four students from each elementary school to build a unique prototype using K'Nex building pieces. To prepare for the competition, teams spent several weeks before the competition working together to identify a modern-day problem, imagining a prototype that they could build to solve that problem, creating computer-designed blueprints and models using CAD software, and then practicing building their finalized prototype using K'Nex. Along the way, students documented the process by keeping a design notebook and writing a script for their design presentation. When the challenge day actually arrived, teams had just two hours to build their K'Nex prototype from scratch and less than two minutes to impress and wow the judges with their presentation

This year, students dreamt up designs to try to increase food production for Pennsylvania farmers. The Exeter Elementary Engineering Elves (aka E to the 4th Power) from Jacksonwald [Yossef Flecha, Elliot Lloyd, Aria Papst, and Lillian Cocozza (not pictured)] created an Elf Bot, which is a solar-powered automated tractor that digs holes, plants seeds and waters crops. The Turtle Titans from Owatin Creek (Felicity Bluestone, Scarlet Jordan, Oliver Scaccia and Natalie Lamborn) made Big Timmy the TractorBot, which features solar panels on the roof, sensors that work with GPS, pokers that make holes, a seed dispenser and a water sprinkling system. Lorane's Exeter Eliminators (Rowan Ouimet, Autumn Schlosser and Aaron Kravetz) made a drone that sends signals to roving scarecrows that can also zap weeds with an electric shock. Although Exeter didn't place in this year's competition, they had a great day of thinking, creating, presenting and competing against other Berks County schools!