Massapequa Fifth Graders Set Out To Revolutionize Breakfast

MASSAPEQUA, NY. — While the quest to build a better mouse trap has been well documented, East Lake Elementary students took a different approach Friday, putting their heads together to build a better breakfast cereal.

The exercise challenges students in the school’s Magnet program to engage in product development activities as a warmup for the school’s Spring Invention Convention. The challenge saw kids given existing cereal boxes with a directive to cover the boxes with designs for their new product. Students will have to fill the boxes with prototypes, which will be given their own nutrition information. Finally, students were tasked with coming up with a mascot, jingle, and back-of-the-box game for their cereals, in an effort to teach them marketing conflicts.

“[Massapequa Teacher Michaela] Himmelman said the goal is for students to be creative, think outside of the box and understand their audience,” the school said in a release. “This challenge prepares them for Invention Convention, in which they think of a problem and create a product to solve it. East Lake’s fifth grade Magnet students and their peers from the other five elementary schools will showcase their ideas and markets plans at a districtwide event in April.”