3D Printed Christmas Trees: Mini Class Project Juniors

Challenge: For every student in the classroom to create a unique Christmas tree for the classroom, where everyone in the classroom of twenty six Year Three and Year Four.

Background: While we have already completed a series of prints from this sequence - as detailed on this blog including Christmas ornaments, Christmas Angels, Snowman and large scale trees.

The next step was something that we have been asked about in the past, how can we produce a series of prints realistically for a class of students, when you are running one printer.   Essentially we are running just the one - at this school we are so lucky to have three main printers that are available for use - one of the awesome things this year has been having new staff members to school who have also got on board with 3D Printing projects and this also has meant that the printing project time has to be managed carefully.

Early this year we completed a series of prints based around the students creating earrings - this worked extremely well as the print time typically was under half an hour per project, and for a classroom of students was achievable.

We have detailed in the past some of the aspects related to Tinkercad and in particular the main interface.  In the example shown left are some of the pre-created shapes that can be imported easily into the students design screen.   Once the shape has been imported the students are able to add additional shapes, as has been shown in previous designs such as the star, and the bobbles for the tree.

This potentially is something that could be completed by the younger juniors - our classroom is going to put these designs to students from our Y1 classroom, as we would rate this as an 'easy' for them to complete with the assistance of our older students (again as noted in the past we have a classroom of seven and eight year olds).

Level of Difficulty: Easy.   This is something that we are going to work on with our classroom of juniors working with a classroom of Y1 students on a peer basis - these students have never used Tinkecad before, and we are confident given the scaffolding and work from the students in our classroom that it will be successful.   We want to very much involve our students in using the AR/VR option for iPads to check for potential printing errors and design flaws.

Size: We targeted this print with the intention of making it small, to make sure printing is feasible in the case of completing it for my classroom and also with a number of other students.   The examples shown left is 40mm high and 20mm wide at the tree portion of the print and the trunk measures 10mm across and a further 20mm high).    It has been suggested that this would also make a pair of novelty earrings.   

Timeframe: One hour for the example shown left.  This is ideal for the print and we would likely redirect students who would create something larger than this.   This creates a print that is unique and would be suitable for hanging from a tree.  Again we wanted to allow for the creation that could be realistically produced for a class set before the end of the term.

What we would do differently/Next steps for the students:

This option has proven already to be successful task for the classroom which a number of students have completed.   The size and timeframe were realistic, and the skills required are something that our students have proven that they have developed using Tinkercad during the year.