Wheel and Axle day

Wheeeeeee! What a great day. Gosh, I was in paradise. The kids took a mildly amusing and interesting project and really ran with it. Mad decorating and innovations with design and decoration with these cars, and then they even ended up drawing multiple tracks for the cars with side walk chalk on the ground complete with pits of despair, lava, water obstacles, and so much more. I can't TELL you how happy this all makes me.... kids happily immersed in creating and playing is just WHERE IT IS AT, for me. Woo hoo!

Inclined planes

Hmm.... this was a fun project we did in Simple Machines class that is of course very loosely associated with inclined planes.... I believe inclined planes are most often used as 'machines' when you need to push a heavy object up a ramp and you're like,' Wow! This inclined plane just rocked my world!' Next time I do this class I'll have to think of a project that demonstrates that concept. As it was, I was able to justify doing this awesome Jack Mckee project (the marble roll.... scroll down) that I've wanted to do for years now. Jack Mckee is SO super cool... buy his book, it is one of my favorites and is chock-full of really great projects.

I also had the kids build their own little marble runs with some hacked-pieces of plastic bottle and TP tubes and whatnot. So reuse-y of me. I had them use velcro to stick the pieces onto the board.... so that supposedly you would be able to build it a-fresh as many times as you'd like. Unfortunately that idea was not really a winner.... the stick-on velcro lost it's stick a little too quick, if you know what I mean. Phooey. Next time we'll just stick with glue guns, the old standby.

I'm not very impressed with my blogging skills, these days. I'm just slapping up these videos if someone sends them my way, and not giving you those insights into my inner workings that you all love so much. I've designed myself quite a whopper of a schedule for this little stretch of fall.... I think this is the most classes I've ever taught at one time, and I'm really trying exciting new things (building a chicken coop with kids! Using a chop saw with kids! This is how I get my thrills!). For the first time ever I have all 3 of my kids squared away in school or preschool situations.... hello Freeeeeeeeeeeeee-dom! I have responded to this newfound freedom by filling up every last bit of my time with work, but, it's great.... I've been teaching classes all these years (three now, can you believe it?!?!?) with babies strapped to my body or balanced on my head, never the most favorable circumstances. Now if I can just find a rain-proof space I'll really be set. And I actually have a lead on that, so send me some magic and good tinkering juju. I will keep you posted, as per our blogging agreement (I write, you read). Good? Good.

Learning about levers with Bowie

For our second Simple Machines class, we explored levers. We played with a balance, made individual mini-catapults (that flung mung beans hither and thither), and, for a grand finale, we flang water balloons with a nice big water balloon catapult that I built. I need to get some video of that, it was pretty fun. The super sweet Autumn, Bowie's mom, took this video of me finishing up the catapult with Bowie. I'm amazed I was being so educational! I guess it just pops out, sometimes.

For those of you who are following along at home, if you do actually want to learn something about levers, I found two really fun youtube clips: Eureka! and Bill Nye. Eureka! has this great Schoolhouse Rock look, and as for Bill Nye, I just have to say, I knew him when. And when I say 'knew', I mean, I used to watch him on Almost Live!, this really great Seattle-based program that used to precede SNL when I was a youngster. Good stuff.

Fun with pulleys!

First day of our Six Simple Machines class, and we all got to play around a whole lot with pulleys... and discovered that they are extremely interesting and cool. We had lots of pulley action going up and down from the fort. Everyone got their own bucket, pulley, rope, and carabiner. We also had a cool clothesline pulley to explore, which was used to send some secret notes back and forth... and then for the grand finale we used pulleys to lift a real actual child. One pulley... we needed several hands pulling on the rope to help get the kid in the air. Two pulleys reduces the effort by half, so, much easier. With this three pulley system in the video, Henry can pull his weight up all by himself!