Building Bridges

All of a sudden we have a major "Bridge" project going on as a result of a tape malfunction while we were working on a rainforest for snakes!

The children were taping down their trees, vines and other greens in the rainforest, when the tape started to get stuck.  Well, they stretched the tangled tape across the wall and started saying, "Hey!  It looks like a bridge!"  Rather than telling the children to put the tape down and get back to the rainforest, we thought we would see where their conversation went.......

They started talking about the bridge and how they could make it stick across the doorway.  The tape was so tangled, that they couldn't get it to work!

It was the bridge that the cars can drive across when they needed to go over the water that was in the rainforest!  Will came to the rescue and managed to pull a brand new piece of tape and that worked!  We were so impressed with Will's work, that we wanted to measure how tall he made the bridge.  The children, who happen to be measuring experts now ;0), grabbed the measuring tape and got to work

As we continued to talk about bridges, we wanted to see what everyone's thoughts of what a bridge was.  We each got our papers and started to draw bridges.  They showed where the water was, how cars drove on them, and different things that lived in the water. 

Their conversation was wonderful while they drew!  They talked about how old they were, what months they were born, they talked about eachother's drawings and what they liked about them, they counted the pieces of the bridge and how many cars they had on the bridge, it was great to see them work on this for such a long period of time!

We could see how deep their interest was in this bridge, so of course we are continuing it!  The problem with our first bridge in the doorway, was that so many people were passing in and out of the door, that eventually it fell.  We wanted to make a bridge that stayed, so the next day we went outside, drew a map of the outside and found a new place to build a bridge.  The children thought that if the bridge was outside, people wouldn't need to be next to it like the doorway and it would stay.  Ashley thought if we used "duct tape" the bridge would be stronger, so Bishop brought blue duct tape that day and they went to work!

But after a day, we were unsuccesful again! ;0(  The weather ruined our bridge! 

So Trevor said, "I know!  We should make it out of wood!"

"The kind of wood that the play house is made out of outside!  Then it can be a real strong bridge!"

Ashley said, "Yea!  Then we can play on it when we go outside!"

So we asked, "Well, how can we build a real bridge?"

Trevor said, "Hendrix's dad has a lot of tools!  He can do it!"

Hendrix said, "Yea, my dad can do it!" 

The children rushed to ask him the next day, and he is ready when they are!  But of course we don't want to rush this, we want to make this the most enriching experience for the children.  We are letting them plan out the wooden bridge step by step.

We brought out a book on bridges for us to study how they are built.  And we started using the wood to see how to make it work.  First we built a bridge with sticks and we used tape to hold them together, but that was not strong.  The sticks kept falling off of the tape..........

So then we used wood glue to make a bridge........

But some of the children said, "glue will not hold a "real" bridge, you need to use tools!"  What kind of tools?  A hammer and nails...........

So we gave that a try.......

And here we have our "bridge made with nails" in the process of being completed!

We are also drawing our tools, spelling them, and looking at cards with the names of different tools to practice reading.......

We put the cards in front of the children and ask them which ones say "hammer, goggles, or nails" and as they start to sound out the words they know which word they need to look at for the spelling.

These are two books that we are using now in class to help us with our bridges.  This first book, the children are looking at to pick experiments to try to build different bridge structures.....

And this next book is a wonderful book to introduce the children to reading.  The children have already started taking turns bringing the book home for "homework" to read with their parents!  Any one who is interested is welcome to borrow the book to read at home with his/her child.

We will be making our blue print of our playground bridge with Mr. Preston (Hendrix's dad) in the coming weeks!  We are also in contact with Lowe's to see if they can arrange for the children to visit the store, so that they can learn about the different types of wood and some techniques for building with wood!  If anyone has any strings they can pull with any company to help our project out, we would love your help or ideas!

In the mean time, the children will keep their bridge models and ideas coming!!!!!!!