These sample activities from the Chain Reaction kit help show how Cornerstone lessons come to life in the classroom.
Lessons were chosen from three grades—K–1, 2–5, and Middle School—to highlight how learning is thoughtfully built to match different ages and stages. Each sample gives a glimpse into the kinds of hands-on, engaging experiences students enjoy, where curiosity is encouraged, ideas are shared, and learning feels like an adventure.
In this imaginative, hands-on lesson, students bring stories to life as they design colorful hand puppets and work together to create original story endings. After exploring how authors use clues to build satisfying conclusions, young storytellers brainstorm solutions, give their characters unique voices, and perform lively puppet shows—turning storytelling into a collaborative adventure in creativity, communication, and confident self-expression.
Laughter, strategy, and sharp geometry skills collide as students build, sketch, and decode mystery objects using tangram pieces and a hilarious “pencil nose” twist. One student secretly constructs a design, another translates it into a drawing in real time, and teammates race to interpret the shapes before the clock runs out. Each rotation, flip, and guess sparks a chain reaction of problem-solving, strengthening communication, perseverance, and spatial reasoning in a game where every small move can change the whole picture.
Arcade nostalgia meets hands-on engineering as students design and build their own working claw device inspired by classic prize machines. Using everyday materials like cups, straws, and chipboard, teams experiment with structure and movement—testing, adjusting, and reinforcing their designs to successfully capture paper and ping-pong balls for points. Through iteration and strategic redesign, students experience how experimentation drives innovation, strengthening collaboration, focus, and mechanical problem-solving along the way.
