Tinker Toys are simply awesome!

We're learning about simple machines in science. We watched lots of fun videos showing simple machines like door knobs. I found a neat one on gears, and boy does it ever explain gears really well. If I was the curriculum writer I might want to use this video at some point. I will include it here if you are interested.

So that's a well and good, but really what better way to understand simple machines than to do it yourself? And Tinker Toys are simply perfect for this, so shout out to my brother Chris for this awesome Christmas present for the girls. It has helped me illustrate a multitude of physics lessons.

This was the wheel and axle.

Here she is with a pulley. It worked fine for a light object, but it just didn't illustrate the point I really wanted to make. So we tried it again:

This time with a heavier book. I made it the most bare minimum of parts. That didn't work out so well.

So I restructured the pulley.

On to history. We were supposed to mummify a whole chicken or an orange, (ten guesses why I chose the orange) but I didn't have all the materials. Bad me for not looking the night before to be sure. So I bought them today, and here is the project. The first part is the control, a simple orange slice with no change, put in a paper bag. This is part 2.

Part 3

When we go to check it I will ask her predictions. It gets checked every few days.

This was her drawing of where she would hide her burial chamber in a pyramid.

You can see the mummy in the sarcophagus. 

Here was my stick-man explanation of grave robbers and why they built so many false rooms and hallways.

A few worksheets for science.

And there you have it. The end!