Assembly Line/Henry Ford

When I taught about Henry Ford, I read a short selection from a book about how he developed assembly lines, talked about assembly lines, and then we created an assembly line. We made edible cars. The students need to be put in teams of five. You need the following materials:
1 whole graham cracker for each student
frosting
paper plates
2 Round Candies for each student (I used M&Ms)
1 Square wrapped candy for each student (I used now and laters)

Each student on a team is given a number and that is their job on the assembly line.

Person number one: Places the graham cracker on the paper plate.
Person number two: Puts the frosting on the cracker and spreads it around.
Person number three unwraps the square candy.
Person number four places the window on the crackers (square candy)
Person number five places the 2 round candies on the bottom of the cracker for wheels.

Then we ate and talked about how the assembly line became quicker, beause we became very good at the jobs we had and we had all of the materials we needed and didn't need to spend extra time finding/getting materials.

Then I had them write about the experience. I used the sentence starter: Today we learned about Henry Ford's assembly line. I worked on an assembly line. I ____________.

The kids LOVED it! When I dismissed them at the end of the day, you should have heard what they were telling their parents!

Hope this is helpful and clear. If it's not, send me an e-mail and I will try to help!

Good Luck!

In fourth grade we manufactured key chain bead kits using the assembly line. A student had a craft book with instructions. We bought cord, key chain things, beads, and Zip-lock bags.

We had to define the tasks, design the assembly line, choose a supervisior, have quality control, shipping, and sales crews. Before assembly could begin, the cord had to be measured and cut, the beads had to be sorted by color, little signs had to be made defining each task. We had to have shipping and sales departments.

After we began selling (as part of the school's fund raising project) we had to deal with missing items (quality control), unable to assemble (customer support), special requests for colors (customer service) and out of stock items. We learned a lot, and it was great fun!

Even 10th graders loved it!

Students make cooties (from the Hasbro game) with 3 clay balls, 1/2popsicle stick legs (6 of them), 2 googlie eyes, 2 pipe cleaner antennas

Begin class by
having students independently make the cooties. Time them and see how many they can make.

Then have them do it in assembly line fashion and see the improvement.

I'm sorry, I just got your message. I don't have the recipe at home, but I am sure it is online somewhere. Last year, I set the desks in two long rows for two assembly lines. I had two students for each assembly line in charge of scooping and putting the ice in the big bags. I had a student measure salt, pour salt, measure milk, pour milk, measure vanilla extract and pour( I can't remember the rest of the ingredients). A student "walked" each baggie down the line like a conveyor belt. When they received all of their ingredients they were in charge of turning their bag. One person timed the turning. When the ice cream solidified, the student got another bag and went through the process again. This worked very well. Everyone had jobs and it takes a lot of students to turn the bags. When we finished, we ate it and discusses the process. Good luck! I hope I posted in time to help!
Shannon

Have students research Henry Ford and his assembly line. Students can work in pairs to create power point presentations. Students should include pictures and text to describe each slide. Then each group can present theirs to the class.

I remember reading about some kind of drawing activity - the kids sit in rows, each one completes one part of the stick figure (I can't remember the actual drawing but I think a stick figure would work) and passes it to the next in the row. I remember thinking at the time it was a clever idea, but I teach ancient world so I didn't book mark it, sorry!

I have read about an idea where you create something using multiple parts (you could use things like cereal boxes, etc), demonstrate how to make the product and then let students use the assembly line method to make the product.
I think a good modification on this would be to let students put it together by themselves first and then do it as an assembly line. This would help them get some perspective on how effective the assembly line was.

We had the students in groups of 5 draw a product (they came up with a tv, scooter, teddy bear, etc.). Then, the group had to produce as many as possible in 2 minutes by drawing the product and cutting it out neatly, but each person had to work individually. When the two minutes was up, I walked around and told each group how many I would buy based on the craftsmanship (mostly neat cutting and drawing). We recorded the results. We then told the students to split up the work assembly-line style. We timed them again for 2 minutes and recorded the results. This activity gets the kids involved and backs up the concept with concrete data that they created. Have fun!

we basically reproduced an assembly line concept. We used a picture of car that you would color, cut up, fold and tape into a little paper car. Finding that may be the hard part, then we tried to make the cars with everyone doing everything for a certain period of time say 5 minutes and then the assembly line was introduced and we got to try that for 5 minutes. We counted how many cars we could get done.
We had to have them inspected to make sure everything was colored and made right... no skimping to make more cars hehe.
It was a really cool activity and I think the kids would like it.
If you can't find the cars then something similar would definetly work.

Attached is an activity you can use as an anticipation guide. have the students complete this prior to doing research on Henry Ford. Once they have completed their research they can do it again. They Can also take the events on this paper and turn it into a horizontal or vertical time line.