Maker Faire

One of the members of one of Kara's homeschool groups mentioned that their school (FOCUS Homeschool) had openings at their Maker Faire on May 19. Kara signed the older three up and I took them. It was a very nice Maker Faire. We were there for the full three hours and did not get through all the cool activities they had to do. (FYI: I don't know what weird setting my iPhone was on that produced the pink tone to the photos. Sorry!)

B, J, & V made dancing beans from a super-sized gelatin capsules filled with a marble-sized steel balls. The kids were supposed to cover the pill with foil to hide the secret of how it worked, but the foil was a little hard to work with. I think we'll try covering them with tape. We have lots of that at home!

Then the children made dancing cups using a large plastic drinking cup, a small motor, and a glue stick for the propeller. A glue stick was a clever idea--it was both the propeller and the glue to apply it!

The activity that took up most of their time was making a racing car from a pop bottle. All the kids at the fair were most excited about this activity. The children were shown how to build the basic car and then were told to decorate it so that the car weighed 60 to 100 grams. Unfortunately, the decorations were too light weight. The children spent more than a half hour trying to add enough decorations to get to the minimum weight. I finally went outside and found some rocks and then one of the teachers donated a roll of pennies she had in her room. That really helped. 

The car races at the school took place using air power. They had a fancy contraption that you hooked the bottles up to and then an air pump was used to speed them on their way. We were given motors to take home to convert the cars to self-propulsion. We had a problem with one of the motors, but that was okay because you should expect to solve a few unexpected problems when you are making something. 

Next the trio made bugs from electric toothbrushes. The reason for using an electric toothbrush was to scavenge its motor--to show how you can repurpose an item. We were running short on time, so we grabbed our bugs before they were perfected (B's only had 2 legs!) and we headed over to the electric circuit cards.

I thought this was the coolest activity, but our circuits didn't always work, so the kids weren't as fascinated as I was with the activity. (They may have been overloaded at this point, too!)

Here's their treasure trove from the Maker Faire:

When the children lose interest in the items they made at the Maker Faire, we will rip them apart to make something new!