Adaptation and Extensions:

1) Families invited to final day of Invention Convention.
2) Schools could compete against each other and award the best Invention by grade level.
3) An alternate to this activity could be what has been popularized on TV as the “Battle Bots”. Schools could compete against each other to provide additional incentive.

Another alternative to this lesson is to do a 2-3 weeks AutoRama unit where students construct cars in teams and then have a raceoff for a culminating activity. Here are the PDF files to help with that unit:

AutoRama.pdf