Robots and Mud Pies π Preschool

One day the topic of dropping eggs came up with a small group of children. A teacher suggested that they could come up with ways to keep an egg from breaking when it was dropped. So we decided to do an Egg Challenge. We introduced the topic to the children by asking them what they thought would happen if you dropped an egg. Then we tried it out. We dropped a couple eggs into a bowl and they broke. Then we showed them a small step ladder and explained that we wanted them to think of ways to keep an egg from breaking if they stood on the ladder and dropped the egg.

We gave them a couple of days to talk about it and come up with ideas. Then asked them to make something or find the items they needed to test their ideas. Their ideas ranged from simple to more complex to.... well, just random. One idea that didn't actually get tested was: "Butter on the eggs and maple syrup." However, most ideas involved dropping the eggs onto something like mulch, sand, a trampoline, a pillow, a box and a bag. Two children suggested that Barbie could catch it. One child suggested putting it inside a ball. For that idea we showed him some types of balls and he chose a tennis ball which we cut open and put the egg inside.

Finally, we went outside to test the ideas. We found that the egg in the tennis ball did break. Eggs dropped on pillows or boxes with pillows did not break and eggs dropped into bags held in the air did not break. And it turns out Barbie is able to catch an egg without it breaking! Dropping it into an empty box or onto a leaf or paper did not keep the egg from breaking. And we are not sure about the sand solution because apparently it can be hard to aim while dropping an egg (three times) and eggs will break if they hit the parking lot.