Tin Foil Boats

There are some activities that just do not work quite the way you thought they were going to and this was one of them.  The kids were given the task to design and create a boat that would hold coins out of tinfoil.  They could only use tinfoil and we would test them with what we thought was a lot of coins.  What we found was that most boats were able to withstand the weight of the coins that we had.  And if it didn't then we had to fish the wet coins out of the tub of water not fun!  It was quite messy and the kids could not all see, as you can see in the back ground of these pictures, the kids were not engaged after their turn was over.  When everyone was done the coin round we used popsicle sticks (because we had lots of them) and this really didn't work at all.  There was more classroom management needed than we were used to because the kids were disengaged.  Oh well.  We won't try this one again.