Building Toothpick Bridges, Grades 5-8

We were looking for a book that shows how to build a toothpick bridge for our homeschool co-op to use. This book does not show the specifics of how to build one certain bridge, but it does show basic setups for several different types.

The real strength of the book is that it shows how to set up teams to build the bridges, with easy to follow instructions and lesson plans. The book even shows how to make a competition out of it and shows how to test each bridge to see which one is the best.

Great book for our needs as a group, and I highly recommend it.

I had to build a bridge out of toothpicks once and this book helped me more than anything. If you need help at all you should get the book. It is fabulous.

Although I have made a number of adaptations to this project, the basic concept is excellent as written. (Example of adaptation: we make it non-competitive by setting a target weight for bridges to hold instead of testing all bridges to destruction. Everyone can feel successful, not just the team with the strongest bridge.) Students in middle school can learn a lot about structures, measurement, budgeting, planning, design, and teamwork from this activity. It's always one that our fifth and sixth grade students at The Miquon School recall fondly years later. Although it is presented in the book's title as a math activity, we use it as part of a larger study of structures in social studies -- a good way to cross discipline boundaries.