Rose Hill rises to the K'NEX Challenge
Year 5 and Year 6 boys and girls at Rose Hill Westonbirt took part in the annual K’NEX Challenge* on Tuesday 9th November in the Orangery at Westonbirt School. Their brief was to construct a 2 or 3 storey building for the Olympic Athletes’ village in 2012. Considerations to be taken into account included the need for the building to be suitable for able and para-Olympic sportsmen and women. After discussion, the children understood the engineering fact that a triangle is the strongest shape and so were tasked to include that in their design too.
The children had 45 minutes to complete the task, working closely in pairs.
There were some magnificent feats of design but the eventual winners were Molly Bond and Natasha Houghton from Year 5 (pictured) who received special commendation for their lift and the element of teamwork which they showed. (This was the first time girls have won the task at Rose Hill Westonbirt so they were especially pleased!). The winning team will go through to the final to be held in Cheltenham in April, along with the winners of over 100 schools in the region.
Headmaster, Neil Shaw, commented “the K’NEX Challenge encourages the pupils to develop problem solving and engineering skills and stimulates both their imagination and creativity, as well as being a lot of fun.”
*The K’NEX Challenge is a fun design and build construction competition open to classes of primary children of all abilities. Pupils work in pairs to produce a specific design solution for a real-life problem such as building a bridge, carrying a load or demonstrating a mechanism. The challenge allows their imagination, creativity, and ingenuity to run wild and many absolutely fantastic models are seen every year.
