Posted in Hands On Carnival
|
The latest edition of the Hands On Homeschool Blog Carnival is up over at Science of Relations. Kris did a great job putting it together and I love her Valentine graphic. Now quick, go see all the great entries! |
Posted in Homeschool Talk
|
Using Build It!, one of a series of books by Keith Good, ds made a trestle bridge made from nothing more than linguini, card stock, carboard and glue. It was a time consuming project while waiting for the glue to dry between steps, but so worth it when it was all finished. This book was filled with projects and is so inviting that I mearly told my son to have a look through it and read about some of the bridges. Only a few minutes later he came running to me asking if he could make something. Hurray! Score one for mom. Measurements are given so you can draw out a template to build your bridge on. Once you've drawn up your lines you can tape your spaghetti pieces in place.
Next you cut little triangles out of your card stock or thin cardboard and glue them onto all of the joints. Once this is dry, you can remove the tape and repeat the process to build your second trestle.
Remove this unit from the paper after the glue dries and begin building your main deck. To do this the book didn't give too much instruction. We chose to glue the supports for the roadway right onto the cardboard roadway, glue on the triangle reinforcements and then attach this main deck to the side pieces. Not the way they would have done it in real life but for this model it seemed easier than trying to glue all the little spaghetti pieces to the side trestles. It's important that you get all of the spaghetti pieces to be exactly the same size. After the deck was built, he finished by glueing all the seperate sections together. Again reinforcing the new joints across the top with card stock.
Click here to be redirected to Keith Good's page on Amazon. |
Posted in Homeschool Talk
|
This week at our co-op we got hands-on with "bridg-ucation." All week at home the kids learned about the different kinds of bridges, how and why they are made the way they are and the history behind some famous bridges. We use the first part of co-op as a sharing time. It's a good time for review, the kids are dying to talk about what they've been doing at home and this week several of the kids had creations to show and tell about. It worked out perfectly that we had examples of arches- the strength of the arch, trestle bridges - the strength of a triangle vs. a square and suspension bridges - the strength of steel and compression vs. tension. To begin our experiments we demonstrated the stability of the suspension bridge using a KONOS activity. Two large books were set up on end about 1-2 feet apart. Next a string was tied from one book to the other and we hung some matchbox cars from the string so we could see how much weight it could hold before one of the books fell down. It held 2 cars. Then we laid the string over the tops of the books and anchored the ends beyond them so the string took on the shape of an M without the big dip in the middle. This time the string held 3 cars. We then took all the kids into the living room to put tension and compression into a bodily form. This time the kids lined up in groups of 4, side by side. The middle two kids pressed their shoulders up against each other while the end two kids pulled outward.
It worked out to be a wonderful demonstration of the importance of equivalent force as several teams tumbled to the ground! They all tried again trying to get just the right amount of tension and compression to keep their "bridge" up. This was one of many activities found in Bridges Amazing Structures to Design, Build and Test by Carol A. Johmann and Elizabeth Rieth. A wonderful, wonderful book full of activities, you'll love it! A couple of our littles remembered the importance of a triangle!
Back to our KONOS book for our next activity, building drawbridges out of quart cream cartons. We could not drink enough cream to supply each child with his own drawbridge (although we tried) so we set up teams and the kids worked together. I can really see the cooperation we worked on last spring coming out in our kids now. They do so well together!
Here's a picture of a completed drawbridge. You turn the pencil to raise and lower the bridge.
While all of these activities are going on dh is busy working on our trestle bridge.
One of the moms brought her drying rack. Turned on it's side and reinforced with dowels and pipes tied on with string, dh then laid a board over the horizontal slats. VERY CAREFULLY the kids could crawl across the bridge. You can make this sturdier with more reinforcements so the kids can eventually walk across it but we were satisfied with crawling.
The last activity we did for the day was a bridge building contest. For this project, we gave the kids access to a multitude of recycled goods, some popsicle sticks, straws, rubber bands, string, paper clips and glue. They were given 30 minutes to build a bridge that would later be tested for durability, weight capacity, length and attractive design. My oldest dd did not enjoy this activity at all, but she was a good sport.
I was amazed at how some kids were finished in a matter of 5 minutes and others used every second they had of the half hour to it's fullest potential.
|
Posted in Homeschool Talk
|
My oldest did a tracing of this bridge while learning about the different types of bridges and studying the more famous ones. Just for fun, can you name this bridge?
|
Posted in General Talking
|
We have just begun studying super structures and in my researching I found this neat blog about some of the world's most fascinating bridges. Not necessarily the longest, biggest etc. but definitely cool. |
Posted in General Talking
|
Yes! Miracles do happen here in Massachusetts! Thank you Lord for hearing our prayers. |
Posted in Homeschool Talk
|
In preparation for our next unit, Determination, I found a neat site to share called Building Big. It's a website and tv series on PBS that teaches about building bridges, tunnels, dams, domes and skyscrapers. The website has lots of tutorials and challenges for the kids to fool around with. They also have an extensive database of major structures all over the world and how they stand up next to each other. I can't tell you how exciting this is for me. It would have been really useful last week when I was trying to create a list of 10 structures I wanted to study with the kids. I've linked their logo above to their site map which is super easy to navigate and puts everything together at a glance for you.
|
Posted in Homeschool Talk
|
This week dh took us outside to play like pioneers. He talked to us about the tools they would have used and how they made shingles. In the end, using some larger sticks off the wood pile, the kids worked together to build a corner wall of a lean-to so they could practice notching the ends of the "logs". They worked hard and built a beautiful little structure.
|
