Gametes In Love

We did it!

Ok, so NO designs came home, but we ended up drawing and talking through a couple of proposals after dinner. I present you with….

Design #1: Handles in vertical orientation and the rope over. Dismissed because the rope would get in the way of the ball.

Design #2: Handles in horizontal position and ropes to the sides. Dismissed because the ropes would only keep it stable left/right vs. front/back. Left/right movement wasn’t a problem: Back/front was.

Design #3: Handles in the horizontal position, and ropes to the front, and back. This one looks extra messy because we already had some revs to delete from before.

And the final result is….

G opted to build design #3 first. I feel like I lost on a teaching moment with the other 2 not doing what he wanted.

But now he’s a happy clam.

S and he are enjoying practicing his baseball pitching styles. I can see why he wanted to do this now: kid’s a jock. As long as he stays a brainy jock…

At home, we have two big-arse life-preserver-like things that the kids got for some sumo-wrestling-type games. You might have seen this fun video of them.
Luckily for us no injuries have happened yet… in big part because they tend not to battle in that manner much.
Instead G has created a game for himself, where he stands one donut up inside the cavity of the other, and then tries to throw a ball inside the standing circle. His contraption looks something like this:

Yes, this is where my formal art-instructed family can make fun of my terrible perspective. But you get the point, ya?

G’s main issue is that the donut standing up keeps falling when the ball hits it… or when it goes through. Today he threw a fit over it. Or more specifically threw a fit because his attempt to tie the two donuts together (through the handles) wasn’t working.

I challenged him! I told him that strings/rope would probably work. I told him to look at suspension bridges as inspiration for how, and I gave him homework to do during after-school in creating a design proposal of how that could look. I, honestly, can’t wait to see what he comes up with!

And if he doesn’t come up with anything, we’ll do a design together. Then we’ll build it.
Enter in nerdy project giddiness.