Inventions, Inventors, & You

Grades 3-7

Dianne Draze

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781593630829
• eBook ISBN: 9781000493849
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Inventions, Inventors, and You is a comprehensive unit that will not only acquaint students with significant inventions and inventors, but will also give them techniques for being more creative. Inventions, Inventors, and You takes invention out of the history books and brings it to life.

This combination of research and creativity training allows students to explore how our lives have been affected by inventions while they build their own creative skills. Inventions, Inventors, and You offers something for every teaching and learning style. The teacher's section gives outlines for directed lessons, warm up ideas and guidelines for learning centers and bulletin boards, as well as pretest and invention reference lists. The student section includes reproducible worksheets that explore inventions, inventors, the inventive process, and 27 project ideas. These activities take your class through the entire inventive process with many opportunities for side trips. Use for a unit on creative thinking or on the history and social impact of inventions or to enhance the study of famous inventors.

From a youngster's playful attempts to use objects in new ways, to the adult's efforts to solve everyday problems, we see the inventive mind analyzing at all times. If you're planning an invention convention, put this book on your must-have list!

Grades 3-7

Uses

Name____________________________________

Lucky you! You have Just won fourth prize in the Local Association of Builders (LAB) yearly raffle. You have won a brick. Now you have to decide what you will do with the prize.

How many different uses can you think of for a brick? List as many as you can.

How many more uses can you think of If you can change the brick in some way-make It smaller, make It larger, break it into pieces, or combine It with other bricks or other things?

Unusual Uses

Name____________________________________

List several uses (usual and unusual) for these Items.

Assessing Attributes

Name_________________________________

Attributes are the characteristics and functions of an item. Attributes could be the size, shape, appearance, weight, purpose, use, or material of construction of an object.

By looking at the attributes of something, we are often able to see new ways that we can change It to make a new, Improved version.

What are the attributes of a backpack?

Think about some of the attributes you have listed. How could you change a backpack by changing the attributes?

Which change do you think would be the most useful and why?

Using Attributes

Name____________________________________

Make a list of all the things you can think of that have the following attributes.

How could you combine two things from your lists to make a new, useful object?

Combine __________ and _____________ to make a ___________

____________________________________________________

The function of this invention would be _________________

____________________________________________________

Making Changes

Name____________________________________

You have just found a magic lamp that will enable you to perform magical transformations. With these abilities, you are able to improve things by making changes.

Think about what ways you could improve shoes if you could perform the following changes.

1. Increase In size or quantity _____________________________
   ____________________________________________________
2. Decrease in size or quantity ____________________________
   ____________________________________________________
3. Substitute something __________________________________
   ____________________________________________________
4. Modify In some manner _______________________________
   ____________________________________________________
5. Combine with something else ___________________________
   ____________________________________________________
6. Rearrange or reverse __________________________________
   ___...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• Contents
• Teacher’s Section
• Worksheets
• Individual Projects
• Invention Patent