Trebuchet!

This was awesome! It's a great way to get the whole family involved in school stuff. Chris and I had a trebuchet building competition with legos. 

 

Do we have any sets that resemble a trebuchet? Nope. We had to come up with whatever we could with what we had. We would tell the girls what shape and size pieces to look for. I need a skinny one with a single line of 6 or I need a thick one with 2 rows of 3.

Can you guess whose is whose?

The trophy Tamarin made for whoever won the competition. Unfortunately, one of the trebuchets kept breaking so there was no winner.

Tamarin was the score keeper. This is a great lesson in measurements. If she were a bit older it would be a fun way to talk about averages. Since she is young we listed all the throws and discussed which was longest, shortest, if throwing heavy things went further than lighter objects, why she thought this was, etc.

The greatest thing, the kids got to play with them afterwards and it didn't matter if they broke.

This was also a lesson in taking failure graciously. Each time mine failed, I simply said in a cheerful way, "Mama failed! I know it doesn't work that way now, let's try again!" Tamarin eventually said, "It's not good to give up, then you always fail." I think that one might actually hear some of the things I say to her, go figure.

What's your favorite learning game? What's your favorite thing to build with legos?