Can Kindergartners Brainstorm?

This week my school has finalized plans for our school-wide engineering day. When choosing projects we had some specific things to keep in mind: make sure it aligns with the standards you are teaching, learning is done is teams, the process should be student led, and students should be solving a real life problem.  Fourth and Fifth grades are going to design more Eco-friendly packaging, third grade is tackling soil erosion, second grade is talking about sound and how to create a school alarm system that isn't terrifying (fire alarms are super loud and scary, right?), first graders are building containers that sustain plant life, and kindergarten... well... we are talking about movement. 

It's been tough to come up with a real life problem students can use engineering to solve when our biggest problem is five year olds are not that great at working together and following a plan.  I truly have been agonizing about this for weeks.  I know they're only five, but I want them to do something amazing! Finally, somewhere in the middle of talking with another teacher I found peace with the fact that before students can cure cancer, they need to learn to simply follow the design process. 

So no, my kindergarteners will not be building a flashlight that is powered by the heat of their hands.  But they will be learning how to work together, how to talk about their ideas, listen to others ideas and respond appropriately.  They will be learning that they need to make a plan, follow that plan (or have valid reasons why they didn't), and most importantly- they will learn that is it OK to fail.  Failure is an important part of the process and I will try my best to get them to embrace it.  I'll let you know how it goes. 

Until then, here is a fun poster with the design process.  There are lots online but I wanted something that would look good in my classroom.  Feel free to take it if it would look good in yours :)