Albuquerque Public Schools
Cardboard Creations Come to Life at Mission Avenue
Students design and build arcade-style games from scratch in a hands-on engineering challenge.
It’s Cardboard Game Day at Mission Avenue Elementary School where fourth and fifth grade students are showing off six weeks of hard work. The students followed the Design Process: Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve and Share.
As an APS Certified Magnet School, students spent the first week coming up with an idea for their game, and then spent 55 minutes each week for five weeks building their playable games.
All of the games had moving parts, scoring and offered fun for all age groups. From variations of Whack-A-Mole, Plinko and Foosball, ping pong balls, marbles and stuffed animals were used for the amazing activities. Some students even made a “Claw” game where winners got to keep their prizes!
Officers from the Albuquerque Police Department attended the event along with students from our campus. The officers joined in the fun. “This is amazing,” said Officer Lemoine as he played the cardboard Skee Ball. With lights flashing, the excitement grew as each ball rolled up the ramp and into the hole for a score. The machine even gave out tickets!
“My favorite game is Skee Ball, so that’s why I made it,” said fourth-grader Brooke, admitting she got a little help from her dad. “I used our T-Bird colors too.”
Another arcade game allowed the player to put a marble inside of a heart, and then turn the knobs to raise and lower the heart to a desired location to drop the marble into a scoring hole. Each game was creative, innovative and a successful endeavor.
Fourth-grader Alayna said her favorite part of the design process was building the actual game, but also “playing other people’s games.”
The cardboard boxes and tape were donated by Apaca Moving and Storage in Albuquerque, making this engineering project a great success.