simple machine Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Olympic Activities for Kids- Creating the Skier

Olympic Activities for Kids: Ski Lift Paper Plate Craft- This is the third in a series for five Olympic themed science and craft activities. This project explores using a pulley and creating a ski lift. This would be fun to do during the Winter Olympics.

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There are several activities children will need to complete to put this interactive craft together. The first thing they will need to do is create the skier. Each of your children will need a wooden peg doll. The skier will need a coat, goggles, and hat. Your children can choose to add more details to each of those elements if they like. (We kept ours pretty simple.)

Olympic Activities for Kids- Creating the Paper Plate Background

Your children will need blue and white paint to create the sky portion of the plate. A large section of the plate will need to be painted blue to make it appear that the ski lift is high off the ground.

If your children want to they can add small houses or skiers to the white section. (We chose to keep that area blank.)

When the paint is dry, you will need to punch a hole on the right and left sides of the plate with a hole punch. A length of yarn will need to thread through both holes. The end of the yarn will need to be tied together on the back of the plate to form a loop. Children will need to make sure the loop is loose enough so the yard can be pulled to make the ski lift move.

Olympic Activities for Kids- Creating the Ski Lift Chair

Your children will need the following to put the ski lift together:

Cardboard from a jello or pudding box

Bendy Straws

Glue Sticks

Scissors

Paper Clips

First, children will need to cut out the corner of the box to create the seat for the ski lift.

Next, they will need to glue the top of the bendy straw to the seat section of the cardboard. The straight section after the bendy part of the straw will be glued to the back of the seat. The remaining part of the straw will be attached paper clip. Once the paper clip is attached, they can cut off some of the straw if needed.

Then children will need to cut two slits in the straw to attach a paper clip. (The paper clip will slip easily over the yarn and help the straw stay rigid.)

The paper clip will then need to be attached to the yarn.

Finally, the skier will need to be glued onto the chair.

how to make a leprechaun trap with trap ideas

We have been talking about leprechaun at our house for years, but we have never tried to trap the leprechaun that keeps coming up in the stories I tell JDaniel. That is until this year. This year we created a leprechaun trap to see if there might really be one in our town.

Steps We Took to Build Our Leprechaun Trap

Quest to Trap the Leprechaun in a Homemade Trap

We dug through our recycling bin to find the perfect box to use for the trap and came upon an old clementine orange crate. It was just the perfect size for the trap and it had holes in the bottom that we could use to create a trap for the leprechaun.

We covered the top and sides of the box with green, brown, and tan shamrocks. I thought it would be fun to give the box a camouflage look. After all we were trying to camouflage the trap from the leprechaun.

Then we created a trap using a pulley with an applesauce cup attached to it. The pulley was made of a piece of yarn wrapped attached to an old spool. The other end of the string was placed through one of the holes in the back of the crate. The old spool was slipped onto a straw that had a pipe cleaner wrapped around it. The straw with pipe cleaner was placed through holes in the back of the crate. The ends of the pipe cleaner were used to secure the straw in place by spreading them out.

The end of the string behind the crate was pulled up slowly to raise the cup and then the end of the string was tucked underneath the crate. JDaniel put in some items he thinks are treasures to test it out.After a few attempts at raising the string, we added pipe cleaner segments to the ends of the spool to keep the string from coming off the spool and tangling on the straw.

Then we painted the box. We should have painted the box before we did the pulley tests, but we did it afterwards. We did remove the pulley system before we painted the inside of the box. The box was painted completely green on the inside. I thought it would be pretty.

The only real problem with the leprechaun trap is that there won’t be someone around to pull the leprechaun up in the middle of the night. Well, there might be. Dad may be up to have his midnight snack. JDaniel drew him an illustration of how the trap works. You will notice the leprechaun approaching the trap at the bottom of the page. I am to write out directions on how the trap work so my husband will know what to do.

The leprechaun trap won’t be tested out until St. Patrick’s Day. I have heard that is when leprechauns are most active. We will just have to wait and see. If we do catch one or temporarily trap one, I sure hope he leaves JDaniel a treat.

I promise to post how our leprechaun trap works out on our Facebook page on Sunday. I hope I will have little man to share with you.

Here are some of the stories we have told about leprechaun. JDaniel told me a few years ago that I ran over one in my car. I shared that adventure in a post called I Did Not Kill a Leprechaun. To this day I stand by my innocence. The thud JDaniel heard under my care was not a leprechaun.This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday.