Toyota Tech Center Engineers Help Heritage Students Build Toy Cars

Heritage Elementary School fourth grade students learned about science, technology, engineering and math while building toy cars with the help of engineers from the Toyota Technical Center.

“A World in Motion” program, a Society of Engineers initiative that incorporates the laws of physics, motion, flight and electronics into lessons for children, was introduced to Heritage Elementary by Rachel Houle, a Toyota Technical Center engineer who had a child in Mrs. Vreeland’s class at Heritage. As part of the program, several Toyota Technical Center volunteers worked with 120 Heritage Elementary students in classes taught by Vreeland, Mrs. Huang, Mrs. Latona and Mr. Harrison.

“We worked with each class one hour a week for six consecutive weeks. Through this activity, the kids worked on developing, designing, building and testing ‘JetToys’ which they then ran in a competition,” Houle said. “They used problem solving skills, team work and other STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) skills.” 

Divided into groups of three, teams began plans to build toy cars with the engineers’ assistance. All teams were given a chassis, motor, axial, and wheels to start.  If they wanted other materials or had to replace materials they needed to purchase them from the warehouse. Each team was given $100 to buy materials from a pretend warehouse and required to keep track of costs as they built their cars. The teams built their toy cars and then tested them. Based on the tests the students modified their designs.

Once the teams were happy with their cars each class had a contest.  The winner of the contest went against the winners from the other three classes. A team from Mrs. Latona’s class won the school competition.

During the final car show each team displayed their car plus a summary of test data and a description of the vehicle. The Toyota Technical Center’s chief engineer for the Tundra and Tacoma visited Heritage to talk about engineering and provide a hands-on example of Newton’s Law.

Two vehicles from the Heritage Elementary project were entered in the special Toyota Technical Center show and one was recognized as “Best Unique Entry.”

Vreeland said it was difficult to list all the ways “A World in Motion” benefits students.

“This program taught students team building skills, science concepts, working with money, trial and error, to keep trying different things, and problem-solving skills,” Vreeland said. “It truly is a wonderful program.”  

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