Customer Reviews

Building Toothpick Bridges (Math Projects: Grades 5-8)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I read this book hoping for a tool to help my 8th grade students design and build complex toothpick bridges in science class. This book is a great interdisciplinary tool and I have seen web sites for 5th graders where the book was the center of a great unit. However, the bridges in the book are simple project composed of two sides and a few connecting toothpicks. If you want a complex science project fro older kids, forget this book. Get it as a unit involving many subjects in a multiple-subject classroom.

Although I have made a number of adaptations to this project, the basic concept is excellent as written. (Example of adaptation: we make it non-competitive by setting a target weight for bridges to hold instead of testing all bridges to destruction. Everyone can feel successful, not just the team with the strongest bridge.) Students in middle school can learn a lot about structures, measurement, budgeting, planning, design, and teamwork from this activity. It's always one that our fifth and sixth grade students at The Miquon School recall fondly years later. Although it is presented in the book's title as a math activity, we use it as part of a larger study of structures in social studies -- a good way to cross discipline boundaries.

I was disappointed by this book because it was not what I expected. It is structured as a classroom lesson plan for a team bridge building project for grade school children. The book does not provide much substance for real design and construction. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for instructions on how to actually build toothpick bridges.

This is a simple pamphlet of about 32 pages. It has very little in the way of actual instruction in the making the bridges. It would be good if you can make a bridge but have no idea how to explain the process to kids. It talks about a job each student in a group would have, has some reproducible copyfree pages, but no instructions on how to make a good bridge. It does mention different kinds of bridges, but only has pictures of the sides, no visuals of the decks. I wish I had been able to see a copy of this "book" before I bought it. I could have saved $8.

We were looking for a book that shows how to build a toothpick bridge for our homeschool co-op to use. This book does not show the specifics of how to build one certain bridge, but it does show basic setups for several different types.

The real strength of the book is that it shows how to set up teams to build the bridges, with easy to follow instructions and lesson plans. The book even shows how to make a competition out of it and shows how to test each bridge to see which one is the best.

Great book for our needs as a group, and I highly recommend it.

I had to build a bridge out of toothpicks once and this book helped me more than anything. If you need help at all you should get the book. It is fabulous.