A part of every afternoon at The New School is a time called Investigations. During this hour children can choose between several activities: art studio, construction materials, strategy games, or work on individually designed projects.
For several years we have used Rigamajig, designed by Cas Holman of RISDE and represented by KABOOM, as a major component of our construction materials. They consist of 1ft-4ft pieces of wood, nuts, bolts and many additional pieces to allow children to build a wide variety of structures. As you can see, they have built houses, shelters, bedrooms and offices, cars, boats and even a covered wagon when we were studying Westward Expansion.
We usually have 2-4 students that first need to develop a consensus about what they will build. Most usually we find that K-4 students are regularly drawn to these large-scale materials. However, we have also had 5-6 graders getting involved in larger size cranes and other complex structures. Problem solving how to use materials and design their structure are inherent in the process. In the built-in cooperative process, children strengthen their ability to give and take ideas and turns with an accompanying feeling of pride at their joint accomplishments.