4 H

I took the kids (all 3 of them) to their second 4H meeting tonight. We happened upon a really great club run by an old homeschooling buddy of mine and it's working out well for us. They meet once a month on one of the rare days when we don't have anything else scheduled. The meeting location isn't exactly next door but it's not ridiculously far so it's worth the drive, and it's an organization all three of them can participate in.

The kids LOVED the activity tonight. They had to make boats, really air boats since they "sailed" across the floor, out of Styrofoam trays, straws, tape, and index cards. (Wind courtesy of a fan placed on the floor.) The sample was just a tray with a straw stuck in it and two index cards taped to that. Very simple, yet perfect for demonstration purposes. The kids used that as a starting point then got a lot more creative!

Talk about thinking outside of the box- The Youngest, aka The Wild Child, came up with the most amazing boat. He started out by curling the index cards into cone shapes before taping them to the "mast". He added a few more things then went to try it out. He watched how the boats performed, both his and the other boats, then kept tweaking and adding to his design. He even came up with the idea of putting a half tray on the end of his boat, which kind of reminded me of an actual air boat with the big fan on the back. The air from the fan had a lot of surface area to push that way. I am guessing he noticed that a lot of the boats were falling over, but they moved better when the bottom was facing the fan. He's quite the engineer.

The girls also had really great boats, although not as elaborate as The Wild Child's. They had just as much fun, though. Pictures tomorrow!