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An inventor is someone who comes up with ways to solve problems or make tasks easier. Check out the mini-lesson "How do you become a great inventor?" to learn more about inventions and inventors.
A woman named Josephine Cochran invented the dishwasher so that people could clean their dishes more easily. Discuss: Do you have a chore that a machine could help you do?
Choose a chore you want a machine to help you with. Then act it out — pretend to do the chore.
Think about how a machine could help with your chore. Draw a picture of your machine.
When your picture is done, find a partner. Tell your partner what your invention does and how it works.
Find the Inventions All Around Us: Ask your students to walk around the classroom and look for inventions. Talk about the inventions they find. Inventions in your classroom may include paper and pencils; tape, pushpins, and crayons; staplers and hole punches; electric lights and the switches that turn them on and off, and so on.
Make an invention box for your classroom. This article from Modern Parents/Messy Kids provides ideas for what to put in the box and some prompts for tasks that the inventions could accomplish.
Invent a Backscratcher: For a hands-on activity, check out this Teach Engineering activity, in which students use simple materials to invent a backscratcher.
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