Make an Amusement Park

Make an Amusement Park is part of Crabtree’s “Make-It Models” series. This book aims to provide students with both specific instructions for designing and building an amusement park model while also encouraging them to use their creativity to extend the learning in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math).

The illustrations in Make an Amusement Park are colourful simplified drawings that support the instructions of the text. The pages are well-laid-out, and the instructions for each project are numbered in reasonable length chunks of information. The projects vary in complexity.

7. Cut out the circles. Draw a dot in the middle of each circle and use a ruler to draw a line across. Draw another line at a right angle and two more lines between them to make eight pieces.
8. In one of the sections, draw a triangle 0.5 inches (1 cm) inside of the edges. Carefully cut it out. Use it as a template to draw and cut out triangles in the rest of the sections. Do this for both wheels.

Projects include a “Helter-Skelter (a slide that travels in a downward spiral around the outside of a tower), “Swing Ride”, “Amusement Park Games”, “Ferris Wheel”, “Bumper Cars”, “Carousel”, and “Roller Coaster”.

Fact boxes are used to highlight important or additional information. These include “What You Need”, “Tip”, “Take It Further”, “Make It Fun!” and “The Science Part!”. Most of the “Take It Further” boxes merely offer more instructions rather than challenging students to dig deeper to ‘take the learning further’. This is a lost opportunity. The exception is the “Take It Further” box in the Roller Coaster project.

Take It Further
Once you’re a master roller coaster builder, you can try adding more features:

· Can you build in a loop-the-loop?
· Can you build in a gap in the track that the car jumps across?

· Can you add more coaster cars and link them to make a train?

A “Further Information” section at the back of the book includes “Where to Get Materials”, “Books” and “Websites”. It is nice to see that the “Where to Get Materials” section includes thrift stores.

It is always a good idea to check thrift stores when you can, because they often have all kinds of handy household items and craft materials at very low prices.

My main reservation about this book is the complexity of the projects. It is hard to predict whether students will be engaged enough with the topic of an amusement park to persist with the intricate construction needed to complete these projects. The math, engineering, and physics involved will provide opportunities for valuable STEAM learning, if the students have the motivation to finish the projects.