Louisa turned 10 awhile back, which is definitely a "somewhere" birthday. To celebrate she invited her entire class as well as a few other friends to help celebrate. I know, I know that sounds insane and it WAS. But she cashed in on two years of "you can have a big party next year... when we are settled." So it was time to pay the piper. Plus, Louisa is just about the most sensitive person I know. She refused to read (or be read to from) the Ramona the Brave books or the Junie B. Jones series, because it hurt her stomach too much to think about those girls making such bad decisions all the time. Thus, the thought of excluding anyone from her class was unthinkable. Sigh. So I pulled my middle school teacher hat out of the closet, dusted it off and for three hours 20 kids had "organized fun" at the Bartkovich house. Two friends came over to help with the insanity. Sometimes you just need a glance or raised eyebrow from another adult!
So here's one of the birthday challenges (pulled from a math magazine of Kevin's). It was amusing, educational and I thought very interesting. I post it here in case you too find yourself needing a fun, educational, open-ended activity.
Your challenge is to build the tallest, free-standing structure using the following materials only: 1 bag of mini-marshmallows and 1 bag or box of spaghetti noodles. You can put kids on teams or let them play indiviually with pre-determined amounts of marshmallows and noodles. We set the timer for 30 minutes but that can be adjusted or done away with altogether. Our kids got to 23 inches with lot's of giggles, groans, screams of delight and cries of anguish.
Words to the wise... breaking the spaghetti sticks is allowed. Mini marshmallows are not M&M's they DO melt in warm, little hands. And last but not least...dumping out the box of noodles and the bag of noodles in a big pile is a mistake.
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