Bolingbrook Students Use STEM Skills to Build Motorcycles

Photo: Meena Hawkins, Kyla Patrick and Logan Grapengetter begin to assemble a plywood motorcycle as part of the Monster Chopper Challenge.

By the end of this week, Wood View Elementary School students will have built 11 different nearly full-sized plywood motorcycles with skills most of them probably never knew they had.

Organized in cooperation with the Center for Mathematics, Science and Technology at Illinois State University, the Monster Chopper Challenge is designed to show children there is no limit to their capabilities.

Wood View kindergartners and fifth-graders began working on the project Tuesday and will likely finish in several days.

“The idea is first they’re working together and second they’re using their engineering brain to do something they’ve never done before,” said Wood View Library Media Center Director Felix Soto.

The completed motorcycles will be on display for three weeks in Wood View’s new MakerSpace area. A makerspace is a center that provides technology, manufacturing equipment and educational opportunities for students, allowing them to design, prototype and manufacture items using tools that would otherwise be inaccessible or unaffordable.

At the end of the viewing period, the motorcycles will be dissembled and returned to ISU.

Submitted by Valley View School District