Thursday, October 16, 2008

Think! Week 6

This week's Think! project was to build a car. We were allowed 4 sheets of paper, 2 pencils, 2 markers and tape. No scissors were allowed. This was a challenge! But the picklets worked and came up with some great ideas.

Chip made rings out of paper and taped the markers and pencils inside the rings. He then made a big loop and taped it to the outside of the two bigger rings and taped a piece of paper on top of that. It went down the 5' ramp. when it hit the bottom it fliped over. It was petty cool.
Dill made boxes from two pieces of the paper and taped them together as bottom and lid. He then taped a pencil on the bottom and put the lids to the markers on each end of the pencil The lidless markers were then taped on the other end of the car, though they didn't roll. His car made it down the mat though the "marker cap wheels" fell off part of the way down and it ended up sliding sideways and crash landing at the end. Sweet's first attempt was also a box made out of two pieces of paper. She then rolled two pieces of paper into tubes and taped those on the bottom. leaving at least an inch of space between them. On each side of the car she taped a marker lid. She then laid the markers and pencils, free standing, in between the taped down items. She was hoping they would roll and be contained. They fell out and the car stopped.Her second attempt had paper loops for wheels that she hoped would roll down the mat. Well, the wheels fell off and she was looking for a handicap due to a kitten hazard.I guess she kept Think!ing about this because during the debate last night (I am the homeschool mom that made my children remain in the room to at least listen to the candidates) she made a new car! I was very impressed by her design and her reasoning. After the debate, when she was showing it to me, she proudly announced, "The directions said I couldn't use scissors but they didn't say I couldn't use an x-acto knife." At first I really wanted to say, "That is what was meant." But I didn't. She was thinking outside the box and I was not only awed but I respected that. She made a rectangular box out of 1 sheet of paper. She then put holes through each side of the car big enough to stick a pencil through. She made 4 loops from a piece of card stock, put the loops on a piece of paper and x-acto-knived 8 circles. She taped the circles onto the sides of each loop and stuck one end of the pencil (that is being held by the car) into the loops. Who said you can't reinvent the wheel??? She thought through the process of how the van's tires turn and made an axle and wheels. It rolled down the 5' ramp and out 3 feet from the ramp for a total of 8 feet.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Awesome! :-)