All over the United States, "armies" of volunteers have been sewing masks for protection against the coronavirus and donating them to health care workers, family, and friends. Have you seen any masks specifically for children? Who better to design them than the children themselves? 

Start with an image from history. This photo appeared in our local paper recently after staff at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum went digging through their archives to find images from the 1918 influenza pandemic:

Phillip and Barbara Loomis, 1918

And the mask below was designed for a New York theater production titled The Eternal Prodigal in 1936:

https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200217668/

The second primary source reminded me of a lesson in design thinking created by Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow   Amara Alexander  for her Tuskegee Airmen album. We just "sparked" and posted Amara's primary source set with teaching ideas in the new Spark Your Album! album here in the TPS Teachers Network. Can you find the beautiful graphic of her engineering design process? 

How would you use design thinking and primary sources to guide students through the process of designing pandemic masks for children?

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