Indiana Department of Education
The Represented World: Communication—Packaging
Challenge your classes to design and market a new product. Collaborative groups use geometry skills to create packaging for their products. Finally, they plan a marketing strategy to present to a marketing specialist.
Teach Engineering
Life Cycles
Breathe some life into product design. Pupils learn about the stages of product creation, use, and disposal—sometimes called a cradle-to-grave assessment. They see how this cycle relates to the life cycle of organisms.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Ship the Chip
Here is a tasty challenge, especially for middle school engineers: design a container that meets mass and volume criteria, and will safely transport a tortilla or potato chip through the mail without damaging it! Mostly, this is a crisp...
Curated OER
Food Packaging
Students identify the functions of packaging food and how the designs work. In this food packaging lesson students identify the changes that occur in different types of materials.
Teach Engineering
Design Inspired by Nature
Let nature guide your engineering designs. By taking apart a flower, pupils learn about reverse engineering. They use the results to brainstorm designs for new products or ideas. This is the seventh installment of a nine-part Life...
Curated OER
The Total Package
Students design streamlined packaging designed to reduce waste production. In this waste reduction lesson, students view a diagram to introduce the concept of the engineering design process and discuss ways that packaging can be useful....
Beyond Benign
Water Bottle Unit
How much plastic do manufacturers use to create water bottles each year? The class explores the number of water bottles used throughout the years to determine how many consumers will use in the future. Class members compare different...
DiscoverE
Harmless Holder
Here's a lesson that's not for the birds! Scholars design and build packaging for soda cans that is environmentally friendly. These packages must be durable, easy to carry, and have no environmental impact.
Curated OER
Snack Attack - Food Packaging
Class members examine a variety of snack foods, noting the packaging that they come in. They work in groups to design a heat-proof and waterproof package that will safely transport a s'more snack. They test to see if it prevents the...
One Hen
Making Choices
When choosing what foods to eat, there are a lot of factors to consider. To help make the decision a little easier, young learners work in small groups developing short plays, stories, or advertisements that address the different issues...
Curated OER
Packaging Your Product!
Fifth graders discuss the functions, benefits and drawbacks of packaging. In this product package lesson students design alternative packaging and write an essay to deal with the issues of packaging.
Curated OER
Making Decisions: Packaging and the Environment
Students work in small groups to redesign the packaging of several common items. They attempt to reach the goal of 25% reduction in packaging materials currently used and explore the impact of various materials and designs in landfills...
Curated OER
It's all In the Package
Students examine the concept of reducing solid waste and how it relates to product packaging. They read about and evaluate the packaging decisions of two major U.S. corporations, develop a t-chart comparing the pros and cons of various...
Curated OER
Product Packaging Conundrum
In this product packaging conundrum worksheet, learners research product packaging to select materials and design for packaging a model of the school mascot. This page has numerous links to helpful web resources.
Curated OER
Package Those Foods!
Students create a food package for a specific food. For this marketing lesson students divide into groups and research, design, produce, market and analyze packaging.
Curated OER
EGG-cellent POLYMER PACKAGING DESIGN
Students investigate the concept of a polymer using an experimental design of protecting an egg in a bookbag. They test the properties of polymers and form an educated solution to the proposed problem. Then they describe the steps used...
Teach Engineering
Exploring the Forces of Tension
Let the resource stretch the minds of your young scientists with a lesson about tensile strength and stiffness of materials. Groups consider how easily materials stretch and relate this property to engineering design.
Teach Engineering
Model Heart Valves
Small groups use the knowledge learned about the heart to design and build a prototype of an artificial heart valve. The teams demonstrate the functionality of their valve. They are also responsible for creating a pamphlet that describes...
Curated OER
Designing More Effective Packages
Students make an environmentally sound package. In this packaging lesson students examine various types of modern packaging. The problem of waste is discussed leading into a discussion of waste reduction. The students choose an item that...
Curated OER
Packaging Design
Learners explore different aspects of packaging design use these guidelines in their own design prototype project.
Curated OER
Packaging
In this environmental awareness lesson, students discuss packaging and the importance of using recycled materials in their packaging. Students bring in all sorts of items from home, and brainstorm ways that those items could have been...
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Shipping For Survival
Students explore package engineering and investigate design. In this shipping instructional activity students are given a flower and are to come up with a packaging that will allow the flower to get to its destination as fresh as...
Teach Engineering
Live Like an Animal
When your parents say that your room's a pig sty, tell them about biomimicry. The sixth installment of a nine-part Life Science unit has scholars research the shelters used by animals in the natural world, like turtle shells. Using the...
Curated OER
Lesson 3: Nutrition, Labeling and Packaging
Students explore basic nutrition concepts to help them select healthy diet, evaluate food intake, discuss major food labeling issues, design labels for food products, examine history of food packaging development and how packaging...