Students build arcade out of recyclables

RIDGEFIELD — Second grader students at Union Ridge Elementary School had the opportunity recently to create their own arcade games with recycled materials. Sara Eastham’s class participated in the Global Cardboard Challenge, inspired by a short documentary called “Caine’s Arcade,” in which 9-year-old Caine Monroy spends the summer building a cardboard arcade in his dad’s auto parts store in Los Angeles. Students at Union Ridge created a variety of projects with their families over three weeks, including Skeeball, bowling lanes, claw machines and mazes. They used boxes, bottles, paper towel tubes, milk cartons, old toys and twine. Eastham’s class used the challenge as a STEAM, or science, technology, engineering, art and math, project. “The students had to plan, engineer, create rules, and decorate their projects,” Eastham said in a news release. “Presenting the games gives them a sense of accomplishment and gives them ideas on how to improve or create another. And they had a blast.”