Saving Fred

Have you heard of Fred?  The children were given the task to save Fred (the gummy word) who fell off the boat (the cup) and got stuck under the boat.  The goal was to save him by getting him into the life-preserver (the peach ring) without using hands or letting him fall back into the sea (the table).  They were only allowed to use two paperclips.

The REAL goal of this lesson is to work on critical thinking and communication.  Your children had to communicate their thinking to their partners and they had to try many different ways to get Fred into the life-preserver.  It was a great team building activity and an important lesson to help the children learn about how there can be more than one way to get a right answer.  In this lesson, the “right” answer was to save Fred, but was achieved by the children in many different ways!