Think!: Blindfold Drawing

We needed a project yesterday. Something a little silly, kind of fun, something to give us a breather from the grind. I looked up the latest Think! challenge, Blindfold Drawing. Perfect. We blindfolded ourselves, drew blindfolded for a short time, switched papers, drew some more, and Voila! A masterpiece to color, with lots of giggles.

Building Bridges

In the fall, the fine young gents chose to do a bridge-building study. Third-grade gent has ambitions to be an engineer who builds bridges "and other stuff." Well, sort of. He's either going to be an engineer who cooks and plays music for fun, or a musician who cooks and builds bridges, or a famous chef who designs bridges and kitchens and plays several instruments. And why not? We started our bridge study with this amazing book:

Bridges: Amazing Structures to Design, Build & Test (Kaleidoscope Kids), by Carol A. Johman.

The book is a wonderful blend of information and hands-on practice. We had a grand time making human structures to demonstrate the principles of tension and compression. The fine young gents learned about different occupations involved in bridge building and drew and labeled their favorite of the three basic types of bridges.

And the fine young gents started building:
Third-grade gent started with a single sheet of paper across two books. Will it hold a car? He took notes on his failures and successes. He ended up with an accordion-fold sandwiched between two flat pieces to give his Hot Wheels a sturdy smooth bridge.

We've only gotten halfway through the Bridges! book. We keep getting sidetracked by other fantastic building resources, like Bill Nye the Science Guy's video, Structures. Check out these egg structures!





We also got the idea for this bridge of straws and pins from a Bll Nye video:
The gents wanted to explore and discover construction using household materials, too. They made a maze for the Minotaur, a ziggurat, pyramids, and refrigerator box forts. They built bridges using stacking cups, dominoes, marbles mazes, pick-up sticks and (of course) wooden blocks.
I stepped around and over block bridges, mazes and houses for weeks.

The holidays afforded construction opportunities with a new set of materials. What can you make with graham crackers and leftover icing?
Or gumdrops and toothpicks?
Or gingerbread and candy?
And we've been doing challenges from one of our favorite blogs, Think! No pictures, so no posts, but we've kept ourselves busy. Eventually we'll finish our Bridges! book, but not (I think) our bridges study.

Next up, the book the eldest of the fine young gents spotted the day after Christmas and went, "Oooooooooooooo."
I didn't see him for nearly an hour.

A Late Tuesday Ten: What's Up?

Ten Things Keeping Me Busy, or An Update of Sorts

1. Planning a choir trip.
I'm planning a three-day trip for lovely lady's choir. Phone calls, emails, faxes, meetings. Details. Shopping. Fielding phone calls from parents worried about everything from their trip account balance to the swine flu. I can't wait to go on the trip, and I can't wait until it's over.

2. Choir.
Spring choir started, upping the number of choristers in my family (and thus the number of separate rehearsals for the Mom Taxi) to four. The Spring Concert took up an entire day with rehearsals and performances. Now the concert is over, the spring choir is over, and the season is winding down.

3. Karate.
We signed up for a family karate class. The boys and loving husband and I attend together. it's a blast, and well worth the time spent, but it takes up two mornings a week, time we really don't have to spare.

4. Swim lessons.
Fine Young Gent the Eldest has been taking swim lessons all year, with the goal of joining the swim team. Fortunately for our schedule, he loves swimming but is re-thinking the swim team idea because he also loves karate. But I bit the bullet and signed up his younger brothers for swim lessons this session. My thinking: I've got to be at the pool anyway, and if I take them now, no summer swim lessons. So I sit on my rear end on those ridged metal bleachers for 30 minutes, twice a week, reading a book. They learn to swim, I get to read. Win-win.

5. Reading.
I manage to fit it into the cracks of my life, and I still read during the boys' Quiet Time. Right now I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver), still working on Green Housekeeping (Ellen Steinbeck) and The Art of the Commonplace (Wendell Berry), just finished Free Range Kids (Lenore Skenazy) and The Backyard Homestead (Carleen Madigan, ed.)

6. Laundry.

7. School.
Math, language, science, the works. We're studying astronomy this term. For a while we had a balloon solar system on the boys' ceiling. Second-grade gent is working on writing a novel using the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program. Sounds a little ambitious, but he's having a blast. It sounds so...pretentious. "Yeah, my second grader is trying to write his first novel. What's yours up to?" Really, he's just having fun filling out the pages and using his creative brain to write a story just like every other normal second-grade kid. Kindergarten gent has been grousing about doing school work even though it takes him only 20-30 minutes, plus our science readings and fun activities. I told him "Suck it up buttercup."

8. Play.
Still making sure that despite my busy schedule the boys get plenty of time for the "work" of childhood: Play. Especially as spring rolls out the sunshine and flowers.

8 1/2. Thinking about the garden and getting outside while the boys play.
It's been pouring rain. They go play in it. I look out and think, "Gee, I wish I enjoyed gardening in the rain."

9. Watching American Idol.

10. Not writing on my blog.
Too busy. When things settle down there'll be more pictures, more projects, more out-of-doors.

Think! Trash

Think! Challenge, Week 24: Trash. Without clues about the project, choose five pieces of trash out of the trash can. Using those five pieces, along with scissors, tape and string, build a fish that will float.

Our trash can is filled with pencil shavings, floor sweepings and used tissues. Ew.

So I saved the "good" trash for a couple days, and pulled everything out of the recycle bin except for the paper scraps, and asked the fine young gents to choose their items from that pile.

Tolly started with a plastic tray from a package of cookies, two pieces of of a mechanical pencil, a cone-shaped plastic drink lid and a metal rod.
He said, "I don't know how to make a fish!" Which is the point. How does one make a fish with such odd materials? His older brother, always ready to tell others what to do and how to do it, picked up the cookie tray and said, "This is the body." I shooshed him and shooed him back to his own fish. But he was right. Of all the materials, the cookie tray was probably the best candidate for a fish body. Tolly saw immediately that he had a head (plastic lid), two fins (pencil pieces) and that if he slid the rod through the lid, he could fasten the head onto the fish by fitting the rod neatly into the groove in the tray and taping it in place. He taped on the pencil fins too, and off we went to the bathroom sink.

Problem:
It didn't float. I prepped him ahead of time: "What will we do if it doesn't float? If it doesn't work the first time, remember to look for the parts that sink so that you can redesign your fish." At first he filled the sink with more water, to see if that was the problem. It wasn't.

So, back to the drawing board. He decided his fish needed an anchor to keep it from floating away.
It worked! Actually it sank again, but he turned his fish over so that the tray floated like a boat. Success!
He's very excited about his fish. It's still floating in the bathroom sink.

Calvin chose two styrofoam blocks, a plastic drink lid, a paint sample card and an elastic band. He started with the idea of floating rather than fish, and since he already knew the styrofoam would probably float, he wanted to see if it would float if it had holes poked in it. (Actually, I think his first idea was just to poke the styrofoam with the scissors and the rationale came later. Right about the time I said, "What are you doing?")
He ended up changing materials halfway through because his paint card ripped and the other styrofoam block was too big. He traded for two more plastic lids, leaving him with the large styrofoam block, three lids (a mouth and two fins) and the elastic band, which he strapped onto the back of his fish to make a tail. It floated, even with holes, and he's been playing with it in the bathtub this afternoon, transforming it into a droid boat or some such.

Think! Slippery Silverware

Think! challenge, Week 23: Slippery Silverware. Make a tower as tall as possible using 8 forks, 8 knives and 8 spoons.

My fine young second-grade gent had a blast with this one. He's starting to get into the rhythm of the Think! challenges. If at first you don't succeed, try....


Try....


Try again.

He got frustrated because his more ambitious attempts resulted in crashing silverware. It made a great clashing noise, but after a couple crashes it just wasn't as fun any more, so he went for a shorter but more stable log-cabin-style design. Once he happened on the idea, he persevered even when the rounded spoons refused to cooperate, and discovered that he could further stabilize his structure by adding diagonal supports. The final tower:

We've only got so much silverware, so while eldest fine young gent built, his brothers occupied themselves, doing math:

And making silly faces at Mom.
Later, the two of them created elaborate single-layer silverware sculptures like this one:

Today, we created floating fish out of trash, for Think!, Week 24. Pictures and more to come.

Catching up with Think!: Coins

Think! challenge, Week 22: Clever Coin Stacking. Using 100 coins, build the widest possible structure that stands at least 1 inch tall, with as few coins as possible touching the table.

"I have to use all of the coins?" In a dismayed voice. Yes, darling, that's the challenge.

For this fine young gent, part of the challenge is thinking-through. He's a bright guy. Answers to problems often just pop into his head. The value of the Think! challenges for this young man is just as much in learning persistence and the value of making mistakes, in not finding the right answer immediately. Creative thinking isn't only flashes of brilliance, it's experimenting to find out what doesn't work and why so that one can try, try again. At least that's what I tell him.

You can see the point in his structure where he gave up on the "as few coins as possible touching the table" part. He got frustrated when his widening structure kept on collapsing, so he built more pillars. And that's okay, it's his structure. I encouraged and made suggestions during the building, and we discussed following the guidelines for the challenge afterward. Here lies my ongoing Think! challenge: To encourage the fine young gents to persist and to follow the directions without killing the creativity or the fun. How do I help them to persist in the face of frustration, to look for solutions without leading them to my answers, help them to follow the rules without feeling constrained by them?

The final structure measured 9 1/2 inches wide. He was happy with his finished product:

The younger gents chose not to participate in the challenge. But they still enjoy the Think! challenges, because they're given materials for building or creating that they might not have thought of on their own. Kindergarten gent started by building a tall tower of pennies, then got sidetracked by sorting and counting the coins. While his brother built a coin bridge, I played a coin counting game with this fine young gent: Can you find three coins that add to thirty-six cents? How many different ways can you make forty cents?

The youngest gent just wanted to stack coins and knock them over. He played with the coins for quite a time after his brothers had returned to their regular schoolwork. For this fine young gentleman, one of my favorite things about the Think! challenges is that the unusual materials keep him happily occupied and challenge him to experiment with new materials.

This week's Think! challenge: Silverware
We can't wait to try this one!

Think: Rocks, rocks, rocks

Think! Challenge: Rocks.
Choose 7 rocks of different shapes and sizes, all two inches or larger. Build the tallest tower you can build.

We're a little behind on the Think! challenges, what with snow, and holiday projects and outings, and tummyaches. But this challenge was fabulous, well worth doing just for fun. We weren't able to go outside to choose our rocks. Rocks over two inches in size are in short supply around here, and it's too cold outside to go digging around for rocks anyway. As luck would have it, we'd collected rocks on our last outing to the beach, and the boys had a rock collection in a small box, so we were able to track down nine large rocks. The fine young gents started out measuring all of the rocks to make sure the rocks were larger than two inches, which led to a discussion of how to measure sizes: Does it have to be taller than two inches when sitting on the table? Or does it just have to have a surface longer or taller than two inches? They decided that if they could find two inches of rock, it didn't matter if it was a long flat rock or a round rock. Lovely problem-solving there.

We had some challenging shapes. Knowing nothing about rock-building, it took me quite some time to build the structure above. I didn't measure it, so I have no idea how tall it is, but I dealt with quite a few tumbles before I was able to get a tower that stayed up.

Calvin's first completed structure was about 6-1/2 inches. He continued building, but wasn't interested in measuring his other structures.

The challenge he was most interested in was self-imposed: How to make a rock bridge. The two gents worked together on that puzzle for quite a while.
Lovely learning opportunities in this challenge:
Vocabulary--balance, stability, convex, concave, wedge
Engineering--how surfaces fit together, finding ways to stabilize a structure, building different structures with the same materials
Persistence--how to maintain a positive attitude when your structure keeps tumbling
Teamwork--working together, listening to the ideas of others and incorporating them into your own
Fun!
Look at that smile! Tolly built a 4-1/2 inch structure. He was just interested in building something that would stay up. He also spent a long time building new towers and bridges once he'd measured his first structure.

The challenge for me: Knowing that if only he'd try this or that, he could make his structure taller. But, as with his brother, getting the tallest structure possible wasn't as important to him as it was to his rule-following momma. He enjoyed the building and the measuring. He was happy with his final structure.

A good challenge inspires thought, fun, and variation. We only had one set of large rocks, so while his brother built with rocks larger than one inch, Tolly built with the rejected smaller rocks. He had a grand time measuring and knocking down his small towers.

While these fine young gents worked on their rock structures, their youngest brother built block towers and knocked them down. I'd intended the Think! activity as our morning warm-up, thinking fifteen, twenty minutes. By the time we were all done building, more than an hour had passed, and the rocks were left out for three more days so that the boys had a chance to build and rebuild and rebuild again. Lovely!

Consider trying this week's Holiday Challenge: Build a tree! It looks like fun.

Think!: Paper Hats

Think! challenge, Thanksgiving week: Using only three sheets of newspaper, and masking tape, create a hat.

On Thanksgiving Day, I set aside newspaper and tape, thinking that the fine young gents and even the lovely ladies, along with their eight Busy Farm cousins, might enjoy a challenge. Alas, the children disappeared down the stairs to the basement and weren't much seen or heard from until the turkey was served.

Last week, the fine young gents and I finally made hats.
Tolly decorated his hat with masking tape designs.

He was presented with quite a dilemma: How to hold his hat and tape it at the same time, when Mom is saying, "I can't help you right now. How will you solve that problem?" The solution? Ask his brother for help:
I couldn't help because I was trying to make a hat brim, and paper flowers, neither successfully. Levi loved the hat, however, and wore it off and on for the rest of the afternoon.

Cal spent a frustrating fifteen minutes trying to make something, not sure what. He crumpled the paper in disgust, calmed himself down, and started over. I was quite strict about the directions, which stated only masking tape and paper, so he put his scissors away and tore out shapes for decorations (which you can't see well in the picture, bummer) to tape all the way around his hat. Here he is with the final product:

The shape reminds us both of the hats that Grandpa Dick brought back from Morocco.

His newspaper hat is a treasured possession, still hanging on his bedpost.

We're hoping to get back into the swing of Think!ing after the holidays. For now, we'll have to squeeze our Think!ing between making cookies, gingerbread houses, decorating, singing and enjoying this season of lights and music.

Think: Pinwheels

This week's Think! challenge, Wild Windmills: Build a windmill using two straws, two sheets of paper, paper clips, one button, one six-inch length of thread. We would use scissors, a ruler, and a needle during construction, but those items could not be a part of the final solution.

We've made pinwheels that turn in the wind before, using pins in pencil erasers, so the challenge for the fine young gents (and the lovely friends who joined us) turned into making a simple pinwheel windmill.

The eldest of the gents was frustrated in his attempts to make a paper square to fold. It's funny to see human nature at work in our children, in this case the way we so often get an idea stuck in our heads and become unable to think past that first idea even when it's clear it's not working. At least that's what happens to me, and I saw it happening to my fine, and frustrated, young gent. He was certain he could cut a perfect square freehand. It took some time before he was able to remember, with my prompting, the paper-folding geometry we've been doing together, not to mention how we make squares when we're cutting snowflakes.

He finally got the paper folded and cut, and immediately ran into another snag: His pinwheel paper had a very small center and ripped. I introduced the words "design flaw" and reminded him that making mistakes is a part of the process. "It's okay if it doesn't work," I said. "And if you're willing to keep going, you can figure out what's not working and try to fix it." So he did. I think it's starting to sink in. We're after the process right now, not necessarily a perfect end product.

Here is Cal with his windmill pinwheel:

It didn't quite work. But he was happy with the end result because he had fun making it, it almost worked, and he wanted to go play Legos with his friend, B. He asked if he could try again later, so we did (sort of).

Middle gent opted out. He went to play Legos. He's been tired this week and wanted some time to himself.

The youngest gent was raring to try. Levi's windmill pinwheel:

This little guy was a lot of fun to work with. His ideas outstripped his fine motor ability, so he told me what he wanted to do, and I did the work he couldn't do. What the heck, he's three and he wanted to try, and I didn't want him to melt into a frustration puddle or give up because he's "too little". It took a little experimenting and "Not there, Mom" but he actually came up with a wobbly working pinwheel. It didn't hold together well, but he's three. It was a great start.

Our friends made pinwheels too, but I didn't get pictures of the final products. Think! challenges make a great group playtime activity because we get to try the challenges with people who problem-solve a little differently.

We didn't get to actually make more windmills in the afternoon because of other plans, but we did have an interesting discussion about the challenges. Do we have to use all of the materials? (We decided it was up to the person doing the challenge to decide for himself.) Why can't Mom help?--I helped Levi. (I only help implement ideas and offer suggestions. The solution is up to the person working on the challenge.) Can we trade ideas with other people at the table? (Of course! Teamwork and learning from what the people around you are doing is an important creative skill.) Which led to an interesting discussion of the difference between copying someone else and sharing ideas. By the time we got through all of that, we'd run out of time to actually try another windmill. We're hoping to squeeze in some more time later this week.

Last week's challenge, Catalogs, looked like lots of fun (pictures of the creations here--fantastic!): Using only one catalog, build the tallest, deepest, widest structure you can build. The week got away from us, so we didn't get to try it, but we're hoping to get to this challenge someday just for fun.

Think!: Halloween Candy Challenge

This week's Think! challenge: Halloween Candy. Create an animal using five pieces of candy, five toothpicks, and two straws.

The Poohsticks gents were joined in this challenge by several of their Busy Farm cousins.

The first question to arise was, "What exactly counts as a piece of candy?" Does a bag of Skittles count as a single piece? (No.) And do the wrappers count as part of the candy? (Sure. Although no one ended up using their wrappers.) It was determined that a "piece of candy" meant any candy encased in its original wrapper, but once the candy was taken out of the wrapper, individual candies each counted as one piece.


In order to encourage them to be thoughtful with their creations (just a little more on this in a future post), I suggested we all vote on the most creative animal. The prize? The winner got to choose an extra piece of Halloween candy.

But who can resist giving each participant a prize? Particularly when there's lots of candy to get rid of, er, to share.

Cal won the prize for the fastest creation. It's a unicorn. Then he helpfully hung over the shoulders of his cousins and brothers to tell them how they should build their animals. Until they told him to knock it off.


Actually, it's not atypical for him to rush through a creative challenge. He needs ideas and time to process them. If we'd done another candy animal challenge (fat chance!**) an hour later, he'd likely have spent quite a bit more time.

Helen tried a few different creations before settling on a spiky snake.



She won the prize for the longest animal. She also got an honorable mention for the most chocolate on her hands. But she's cute, so she can get away with it.



Robyn made a lion attacking a bunny.



That one made me laugh.

Levi unwrapped a lollipop, stuck it in a straw, and said, "Look! I made a candle." When gently reminded that a candle is not an animal, he replied, "I know. I don't want to," and ate his lollipop. He got a prize for being cute.



Joab made a dinosaur. A triceratops, I think. His prize was for the best dinosaur? I don't remember. I just remember wracking my brain trying to think of a good prize, when he saved me by suggesting his own.


Henry got the prize for working the hardest because he was the last one to finish. The picture didn't come out, which is a shame because he had a cool idea too. He made a rhinoceros, and because he had a little candy left, he made a baby rhino too.

Then there was Tolly.

Tolly, Tolly, Tolly. He wanted to make a unicorn. It wasn't working. My fine young perfectionist fussed and moaned. He griped and groaned. He moped and whined and even cried a little.

He couldn't get a toothpick to stick into a lollipop. His other toothpick broke. He couldn't draw a smiley face on the tootsie roll. Everyone else was finishing and his wasn't working. "You don't have to do this," I said. "It's okay, you'll still get a prize," I said. "Please stop whining," I said. "No, I can help but I can't do it for you," I said.

Suddenly, it all came together. He squished a Tootsie roll into the shape of a head, kind of on accident. Oooo. You could see the wheels turning. He finished his animal. Whew! Oh wait. He was suddenly struck by inspiration, took the whole thing apart except for the head and created an entirely new unicorn made of Tootsie rolls.



I gave each child a Smartie and told them to put it on the plate of their favorite creation. They were not allowed to vote for their own. Tolly won. I think Robyn, kind heart, might have voted for him. And even though I loved Robyn's lion and bunny because they made me laugh, I voted for Tolly's too because I wanted to encourage his persistence and his new attitude.

The kids' favorite part was eating their creations and their prizes. My favorite was seeing that there's hardly any candy left in the Halloween bowl and sending the cousins back home to my sister all hopped up on sugar. (Just kidding. Kinda.)

**In case you're wondering why I say "Fat chance" to doing this challenge again before next Halloween, here's why:
Look at those slimy sticky hands. I can hear you shuddering from here.