STEM - Making the Most of Grocery Store Toys - Spin Bot edition.

I know a lot of people feel that buying the toys hanging on the aisles at the grocery store is a terrible waste of money.  I will grant that these "grocery store toys" are often cheaply made (one of our robots came out of the box missing an arm), and somewhat overpriced for their initial play value.

We have had a lot fun over the years with our grocery store finds though, not only playing with them as toys, but learning from them as scientific exploration kits (where the real pay-off is found).

Take for instance the JaRu Battle Bops Spin Bots I picked up on C's birthday.  They're a simple ripcord type toy - pull the serrated ripcord to make the hat spin and the bot bounce around (a little)...

...and light up.  Just as the box described, they did spin (a little) and light up, but they didn't really move enough to battle (or even knock into) each other.

Having made our own battle bots in the past, the children started brainstorming ways to increase the movement, and action of the toys.

First off, they felt the springs on the legs might be absorbing too much of the motion, and set about adding straight, stiff legs.  This led to issues of...

...balance, and how to properly secure the new legs...

....so they wouldn't fling off from the centrifugal force of the spinning post in the center.  Legs were secured, and balanced, but they reduced the motion instead of increasing it, so...

...the legs were shortened (with little change to the motion)...

...the spinning top hat was freed (allowing it to move more easily), and "feet" were adding to the legs (reducing the motion even more)...

...and weight was added to one foot (still with no improvement of movement).

Finally, remembering the offset motors we used in our own battle bots, the spring legs were put back onto the bodies, and play dough was added into one side of the hat.

It worked like a charm, giving us a much more active robot.

Then, the children moved onto wondering about what was making the light go on.  Clearly the ripcord was spinning the post in the center of robot, which put the robot into motion, but how was that turning on the light?

The consensus among the children was that there was a magnet inside, spinning around wire, to make a sort of hand operated generator to light up a tiny light bulb.  But, when we looked inside...

...we found there were three little light bulbs...

...secured over a half of a rubber sphere...

The lights were on the backside...

...of a little circuit board...

...and the rubber sphere, held three tiny batteries.

After pulling out our alligator clip wires, and an extra bulb (from a finger light - an old grocery store purchase), so we could experiment with closing the circuit...

...while still testing to make sure we hadn't shorted out our lights (thus the need for the extra light)... 

...we finally decided the two strips of metal on the circuit board worked as some kind of centrifugal switches, making contact with the posts, or board, in the right spots, as the central post spun, also spinning the rubber base, causing the strips to move outward just enough.  Or, they made contact by being jarred into place by the bouncing bot (the central hole is lot bigger than the central post - making it move and bang against the board, as it spins).

Satisfied with our discoveries, we reassembled our toys, which were no worse for wear, excect for their faces, which had been partially removed by the tape.  C (age 10) is already making plans for drawing new faces with permanent markers, and maybe adding googly eyes.

Circuit boards, centrifugal force, engineering, brainstorming, problem solving, and art to boot - I really don't think our $2.50 a pop was wasted at all.  

Glow-In-The-Dark Dinosaur Fossil Hunt

The museums of the dinosaur trail (a series of museums across Montana with bones, fossils, and other prehistoric paraphernalia) are set to open for the summer season on Memorial Day weekend.  Hoping to jump back onto the trail this year, I've been looking for ways to gear up some dino-related excitement in the house.

So, when I saw glow-in-the dark, build your own fossil sets from Ja-Ru (who make excellent little dino-digs) hanging tantalizingly from the shelf in the cereal aisle of the grocery store, I snatched one down with glee.

My thinking was, that I could leave the "fossils" out in a window all day on Wednesday (we have church Wednesday evenings, and the younger girls are up well past dark that evening anyway)...

...and then place them around in our nice dark basement, not exactly hidden, but where they wouldn't be terribly obvious...

...unless the lights were off.

It would have worked great if:

1. The fossils actually glowed in the dark for longer than 30 seconds once the lights were off (I would suggest buying an inexpensive wooden set, and painting it with glow-in-the-dark paint, instead).
2. I had remembered that by staying up late, the girls would be growing tired, and might not be up for too much of a challenge (I probably shouldn't have mixed the two sets that came in the together, or spread them over the entire basement).
3. I had made a map of the hidden pieces, so completely lost pieces could be found.
4. I hadn't snapped a few of the bones in half while breaking them free of the packaging.

Actually, the last two probably didn't matter so much.  We simply glued the broken bones back together (not all fossils found in the field are intact, you know).  And, as rain set in for the rest of the week, and we were stuck inside anyway, we took our time searching (most digs take more than one expedition to complete), and finally found every last piece (with great cheers and accolades to the finder of the final fossil), last night.

It might not have been the exactly the experience I was aiming for, but we are much more focused on fossils now than we were a week ago.

Aww-Cool! D.I.Y. Educational Science Fun

My sister sends a big box full of assorted candies and presents to the children for Christmas.  This year, in among the Life-Saver type candy books, scarves and hats, craft kits, and toys that she assembled were three Aww-Cool! DIY Educational Science/Toy kits - a maze challenge, a bowling set, and a bubble machine.

We pulled them out today to put together, starting with the maze challenge.

At first, I thought it was a pretty basic, complete-the-circuit, electric science sort of thing.  Following the instructions, the children inserted the components into their proper places on the board, connected the wires, added batteries, turned the switch on, and it was good to go.

That's when I realized it was actually a build-your-own-toy set.  With the switch on, the object of the game is to move a looped wand over and around a twisted, roller-coaster shaped length of wire (that you bend, shape, and reshape again later, yourself), without touching the loop of the wand to the wire (completing the circuit and causing a bell to ring, like in Operation).

We all took turns giving it a try. 

And, that's when I realized the boxed kit was really a catalyst for creative thinking, problem solving, and scientific investigation, as the children began to notice things like the spark generated when the wand got near to, but not touching, the wire (you can only kind of see it in the picture below - but in real time, it was very visible)...

...or asking questions like - how does the spinning arm ring the bell, when it clearly isn't long enough to reach it?  (Hint: It has to do with a stretchy spring arm, and centrifugal force)...

 
...or when they realized they could bypass the on/off switch by touching the metal wand to the correct connector spring, and make the bell ring even if the switch was off.  Anyway, all that to say that without additional questions, or answers, or suggestions for further exploration, the toys simply lend themselves to very natural learning.

In fact, we didn't even manage to get the bubble machine put together...

...before C (age 9) noticed a comment about making soap bubbles with your hands or other simple tools (written by someone to whom English is clearly not a first language)...

...and she was off and running with a series of experiments of her own.

I can't wait to see what happens when we finally get back to the kit - especially now that I've read that you can connect all the toys together for even more challenges and fun.

It might be a while though.  For now C's pretty happy with her sink full of soapy water.

Skeletal System Sewing Cards

Science is one of those subjects, that we're on the fence when it comes to unschool or not to unschool.  I generally like to follow the children's (or my own) interests into explorations and experiments, but I also like to keep an undercurrent of structured study going at the same time.

To that end, last winter and spring, I had the children reading a science page a day from Dorling Kindersley's Knowledge Encyclopedia (known in our house as "The Great Big Book of Everything"), and then following up their reading with a BrainPop video to match, capped off by the accompanying BrainPop quiz (more to hone their study skills than to actually test their knowledge).

Picking up this fall where they left off last spring, they've been reading about the human body, and yesterday read about the skeletal system.

As a quick go-along activity for my younger girls (ages 9 and 10) I decided to put together sewing cards, by printing a couple of labeled diagrams of the human skeleton...

...gluing them to cereal cardboard, and punching holes through, here and there (clearly taking some liberties where bones form circles, or are very tiny)...

...for the girls to sew through with some of the glow-in-the dark yarn we picked up earlier in the summer (a double strand works best).

So they can see their finished work, with labels, when the lights are on...

...or without labels, when the lights are off.

They glow so much better than the picture shows, too.  I'm completely geeking out over them.

Two-Stage Balloon Rocket - Take Two

The children got up this morning, ready to give our two-stage balloon rocket a second go.

First though, we decided we better make sure our basic balloon rocket set-up was good, so we set up the experiment with a single, inflated balloon, taped to a piece of straw, threaded onto piece of string, pulled tight horizontally.

When we let the balloon go, it spiraled in place around the string...

...and broke loose from the tape, without moving the straw forward on the string.

We thought, perhaps, we had the balloon taped too tightly to the straw.  So, we modified our tape...

...to create a gap between the balloon and the straw.

This time, when we let the balloon go, it still spiraled slightly, and the balloon still broke free of the tape...

...but not until it had moved the straw all the way down, and bounced off E's hand, at the end.

Satisfied, we repeated the single balloon experiment, with the string tilted upward, like we had had it for our first two-stage attempt.

Again, the balloon carried the straw to the end of the string, before breaking loose, and continuing on another few feet beyond E.

Using our modified tape design, we added the half of the Styrofoam cup, and a second straw with tape...

...for a second (first stage) balloon.  Put together correctly, the second balloon is supposed to be inflated enough to hold the neck of the first balloon shut against the edge of the cup.

Our first balloon was quickly deflating, and it was impossible to release them both at the same time.

We tried blowing more air into the second balloon, to make it bigger, but only succeeded in breaking open the cup.

I reluctantly agreed to sacrifice one of my sturdier, waxed paper, coffee cups.

We added some tape to the cut edge of the cup, to protect the balloon, and found that with a sturdier cup, it was possible to keep both balloons inflated, holding only the neck of the second balloon.

Unfortunately, when we let the balloon go...

...both balloons deflated, and broke free of the tape, without moving the straws forward.

We tried securing the first balloon to its straw, with extra tape...

...which did result in a nice break-away of the first stage of our rocket...

...but not only did the primary balloon "engine" fail to propel the rocket forward at all, the two balloons stuck together.  So, as the first balloon deflated, it pulled on the second balloon...

 ...keeping it from moving forward either.

Finally, we tried taping the cup to the second, or primary balloon (I know it sounds confusing - it's the primary part of the rocket, but the second balloon installed), to the cup.

This kept the cup, and second balloon from breaking away...

...but did allow the first balloon to move forward.

The idea of course, is to get the primary balloon to give the rocket a little push forward, then break away with the cup, allowing the secondary (or front) balloon to continue on even farther.  We are still missing the initial push, and proper breakaway.

However, it was about then, that a butterfly flew by the window...

...and the hunt was on.

There are days that almost unschooling a family of six feels a lot like a productive sort of ADD.