It seems like kids questions never stop, and that’s a good thing. Our curiosity drives much of our active learning as kids. What’s inside a TV? What’s inside this stuffed animal that makes it so soft ? What’s inside the walls? On our first day of What’s Inside Nearly Everything (WINE) 2022, we are exploring a simple question that a child once asked us….What’s Inside A Marker that it writes so differently than a Pen?
Basic science is important and to enable kids to learn through experimentation, we offered students a 60 second challenge to try to fill in a simple circle using a ball point pen, and then try it again using a marker or crayon. Rather than tell kids their different, the experiment yields really personalized learning about the purpose of a pen versus crayon, as they take up very different area of the page, as you can see above.
Testing various inks and dies to observe their absorbent properties is something all students learn at KSL
By designing real science with real teachers, we are enabling the next generation to let their curiosity drive their discovery, like the experiment above, which allows kids to explore the concept of ink absorption. None of us like our pens exploding, markers leaking, or crayons breaking, so @ KSL we need to test the durability and then design to make things better. That is innovation.
Our student scholars in camp then used their discoveries to design and build their own markers, pens, and crayons with custom ink that works to write real messages.