For our third DIY Salvager project, we decided on some clothespin racers found on the Almost Unschoolers blog. We thought it would be cool to make clothespin monster truck racers by using big plastic juice lids for wheels instead of buttons! But we ( meaning me) also didn't think about the relative size of the lids to the clothespin, and if they would actually fit, before we started the project!
So the little voyagers designed and colored paper hubcaps to fit inside the lids...
We attached the wheels... (these ones are backwards - they needed to have the flat surface facing inside) attempted to put the monster wheels on the clothespins... and quickly learned they wouldn't work! Too Big! The front and back wheels touched because the clothespin wasn't long enough, so the wheels wouldn't spin...OOPS!
But no worries, we had a whole bag of lids, and so we dug out some smaller ones, cut the hubcaps down to size...
* * * * *
And then it was
RACE TIME!
We made some predictions -- High Ramp, Low Ramp, Faster, Slower, Distance... While racing the little cars down our ramp was great fun, they weren't exactly built for a science experiment. The wheels tip out and don't stay lined up when little voyagers put too much pressure on them. This was a reoccurring problem with little Spiderman's racer.
So, even though our science experiments were a bit of a flop, the little voyagers sure did have fun racing the clothespin cars.
It kept them busy for quite some time!
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