3D Printing with Five Year Olds

 

Challenge: For a Y1 student (a five year old) to be introduced to CAD design and construct their first print, as tutored by a Y4 student.

Background: As a teacher one of the most reluctant aspects that I personally had when shifting levels was the prospect of using Tinkercad with junior students here at Auroa Primary School, this was proven a very long time ago to be a non-starter not only have the students constantly come up with great ideas and engagement with their iPads and technology.

In this instance a pair of students from the core classroom which is seven and eight year olds went back to a junior (five year old classroom).  We have worked with five year olds already this year on a couple of collaborative projects - which you can see by clicking on the link here.

While there are a series of prints featured in this post they have all followed the same design and creation format, so we will treat them as a single example.

The basis for all of them is the students name, then projected around the classroom as a object (using the AR/VR function of the Tinkercad App and the students iPad).   This was shown to the student (the Y1) and the student was encouraged to continue the process.   

The Y4 tutor also was clever in her design of putting two capital letters into the design the first was to exclude the possibility of the 'i' being unlinked in the result of printing (as can be seen with 'Abbie').  In the second instance the Y was made a capital so it would sit above the line and not be reduced to handing  underneath.

As can be seen once the students had projected the image inside the classroom they then moved outside and projected it to be bigger than the single storey classroom the student is from, and allowed her to manipulate it further.

The final manipulated image was taken on the school field where the image was made as large as was feasibly possible and then a photo was taken using the students iPad.

From the start of the process to taking the photos was approximately ten minutes.

Once this had been completed the students then again looked at the 3D Print design and thought about how it might look.  The first version of which was printed.  This print measured 80mm in length was 15mm high and was 20mm wide.   This took only thirty minutes to print on the Bambu H2D (included in this was essentially fifteen minutes of printer preparation time and 15 minutes of actual printing).

The students realised that while this had some appeal as a practical print it was small, so a second version was created.   This was then doubled in size.   Even on the smaller version the precision of the Bambu came to the fore as the printer was able to print the lettering with minimal rafting or waste plastic/PLA.

As can be shown by this print (in yellow) the print itself would benefit from an increase in size to allow it to have a touch more stability.

In this second version (shown immediately to the left) the print time has increased to just over one hour.  The new dimensions for the print are essentially double of the previous print - that is 140mm long however 40mm high and 25mm wide.  The provided more stability 

3D Printing: Five Year Old Y1 Progressions

 

Challenge: For a five year old to create their first ever 3D Print designed, assisted by a junior student (seven and eight year olds).

Background: We are always looking for examples for our students to work with and also opportunities for our students to spread their knowledge.  In this instance we wanted our students to be able to work with individuals from our new entrance classroom, the students who have just started school.

For the task we wanted to balance it between something that would be achievable and something that would be memorable.   We revisited one of our students tasks that had worked well recently with the classroom, which was the cat box design task which originated from our recent general cat themed design.

The original produced task had our students work with the other students and show them the process.   They were able to grasp the understanding of the 'scribble' command very easily which provided the creation of the face of the cat, as shown in the first (red PLA) picture.    The whiskers and the ears had to have the students demonstrating it to the students and having them copy the design, although they could vary the length.   The concept of the name and placing that on the back of the design required close mentoring from the students.     

The final issue was the depth and size of the storage aspect of the cat, in this instance the students needed to take the lead.   In the first example the storage was minimal, in the second the storage was too close to the edge, which while this appeared to be solid resulted in a failure to print as a result.

The final version we opted to create a 'wow' point of difference by using the glow-in-the-dark filament to complete the print.   In the third example (shown left in the pink PLA) the elements of the print that had been identified that needed addressing from the previous two versions.

Size: Although there is some slight variation as the prints progressed with the size of the base (rectangle) the design measured 100mm across was between 50mm and 70mm deep.   Again while there was some variation the height of the print typically was 50mm high.    These dimensions are intended to ensure that the design works as a small storage device rather that something that is taller that might hold pencils etc.    The five year old student had some awareness of size and depth, however they weren't particularly able to articulate the length and measurement of the print.

Timeframe: While we are dealing with a progression of three distinct prints (as shown left) and there was some variation with the overall time it was between four hours and four and three quarter hours.

Potentially this could have been expanded to increase the storage size, however the experience was intended as a taster for the student and to also provide an opportunity for the students from the core classroom to mentor younger students and thus increase their own skill set.

What we would do differently/next steps for the students: For the five year olds the project was completed successfully in terms of completing the project and producing their first print.  For the (slightly) older students the process of creating, refining and explaining was a lesson in developing their own skills.