“In third grade, we have been learning all about our city of El Cajon. Third graders learned that the citizens at that time had a problem to solve of getting water down into the valley that they lived in for drinking and watering crops. Being problems solvers, the citizens built a flume from the Cuyamaca snowy mountains, down into reservoirs like Lake Murray. When you think of a flume, think of a large water slide carrying water down the mountain. They even used to let you pay to ride a small boat down the flume!
In order to show our knowledge and understand the use of a flume, students collected cardboard, and toilet paper rolls as their supplies. When it was time to plan, they had to create a city plan routing the snow melt from the mountains, down to their city and have a reservoir to put their water. When their plan was approved by the city planners (3rd grade teachers), they began to build these flumes.
Students had the choice on a city name, what materials they wanted to use, how their city would look, the route of their flume, and the way they thought would be best to attach their flume. After completion, the students had a test run to see if the water would successfully reach their reservoir. We used marbles instead of water and let them go at the top of the flume! None of the flumes were successful on the first try! Some students realized they needed to make the flume go downhill to allow gravity to pull the water down. Some students realized that their construction caused the “water” to fall out. Some students water just never reached the right reservoir. It took a lot of grit and many attempts to get their plans just right! Some flumes were build 3D and some flat against the cardboard. Students got to be creative and engineer the way they thought was best! The third graders were very proud of their results!”