Noah Jemmott, a student at Union Ridge Elementary School, built a ball toss game out of recycled materials.
Union Ridge student Ella Lasee demonstrates her frog catapult game made from recycled materials.
Union Ridge Elementary School Student Kekoa Warner made a shark-themed skeeball game.
Multiple students from Union Ridge Elementary School gather to watch a ball roll through a maze made of recycled tubes and boxes.
Sara Eastham’s class at Union Ridge Elementary School in Ridgefield is filled with arcade games; however, there are no video screens or digital beeps as every arcade game has been handmade by a second grade student.
Each student recently created a game from recycled materials.
Eastham’s second grade class participated in the Global Cardboard Challenge. The challenge was inspired by the short documentary “Caine’s Arcade” in which a 9-year-old boy spends the summer designing and building an elaborate cardboard arcade in his dad’s auto parts store in Los Angeles.
The short documentary led to the Global Cardboard Challenge where students all over the world create new things using cardboard, recycled materials and imagination. Eastham’s class uses the challenge as a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) project. The project teaches students to be creative, think outside the box and independently solve problems.
Students from the class and their families spent three weeks creating arcade games from boxes, bottles, paper towel tubes, milk cartons and old toys and twine. The results yielded a wide variety of creative arcade games from each student.
“The students had to plan, engineer, create rules and decorate their projects,” Eastham said in a news release. “Presenting the games (other students play the games) gives them a sense of accomplishment and gives them ideas on how to improve or create another. And they had a blast!”
The news release said the kids were definitely having a great time testing each other’s games. Cheers went up by the frog catapult as a student got a high score. Then there was more excitement by the skeeball.
“This is the most fun I’ve had at school!” one student said. “I can’t wait to make another game!”
