INSECT, Week 1, Day 4
"Teamwork makes the dream work!" reminds Manny gently as kiddos leave the chopsaw room with their freshly cut pieces. And we've been seeing some great teamwork this week! From those precious partner pushes to working together to make the pinchers move more smoothly, our teamwork this week has come in all shapes and sizes.
Riley gives Chloe a partner push as they finish up adding gussets to the thorax/monkey bars.
A little later, Riley helped Ella carry a bin of scrap pieces out to where Ella was working on her dragonfly wings. Keep it up Riley!
Joey helps from inside the abdomen while Ben mounts a hinge for the door into the bug's belly.
Around this time in the week, we collaborators have moments of feeling obsolete--the kids know their designs and plans, they just need us to have our eyes on them, hold things together, plug in the power tools. It's a funny feeling, but I think it's a pretty good feeling.
Manny helps hold together two spikes on the outside of the thorax while Olivier screws them together.
Evan holds the plywood exoskeleton in place while Mo tightens the clamp.
Plus, the kids have got each other to go to for help solving tricky problems! After all, there are more of them than there are of us, there's bound to be someone with an idea about how to do that thing. Like Ian and Finn. We noticed this morning that the pinchers were hard to open and close because their weight pulled the ends down toward the floor. So, Finn took a look at the design of the grasshopper legs, and decided to add some wheels to the ends of the pinchers. Well, the only wheels we had left were some skateboard wheels, so then the challenge became figuring out how to mount them. It's a good thing Ian was around! He took one look at the wheels and said, I have an idea for how to mount those wheels! And off they went!
Ian looks for the just right bolt to use as an axle for the skateboard wheels.
Then, they set-up on a table in the shop, cutting little pieces of wood, drilling holes and tinkering with different combinations of bolts, washers, nuts and bracket designs.
We all can't wait to see this big bug come together tomorrow, stay tuned!