The Conveyor belt Project

The twins were playing with their tricycles yesterday and suddenly they put their trikes upside down and started rotating the pedals giggling heavily.
"What are you doing?"
"We are moving the ducks."
"Ducks? What ducks?"
"Like George!"

I thought for a second and then it struck me. They are mimicking Curious George from TV. In one of the episodes, Curious George builds a conveyor belt system to help his friend Allie to get better at a bean bag throwing game at a fair.
The conveyor system looked like this.

Looking at their enthusiasm, I asked "Would you like to build the system like George?"

They got very excited.

I provided them with a elastic band I had in hand and they threaded it around the wheels. 

"How are you going to join the ends of this band?"

"TAPE!!" 

Scotch tape has been our universal go getter to bond anything in our house nowadays.

So I gave them the tape and they taped the ends of band.

Now for the ducks, Shrini tried to draw ducks and Sid cut small pieces of cardstock claiming them as ducks. They stuck the ducks to the belt with tape.

Now, time for testing. We faced many problems.

1. The tape to join the ends of band didn't work. We had to think of plan B. When asked what other option they have Shrini asked me to pin the ends. It worked better.

2. The ducks didn't stick well to the belt. But it didn't bother them much. They kept on taping it again as they fell.

3. The belt(band) did not stay on the wheels. It kept sliding out so much that the frustration levels were increasing. Shrini then taped the band to the wheels and it worked better.

4. They were moving the wheels when rotating the pedals and it caused the band to come off.

Here is a short video of the conveyor belt working.

Such a seemingly simple system and yet so much of trouble shooting and fixing. They also explored different ideas like 

What would happen when you rotate both wheels in different directions?

Can you keep the system going by rotating only one wheel?

Though the idea is not original, I loved that they learnt persistence, patience, trouble shooting and of all a big idea that you can build something by watching TV!

Their eyes were gleaming with a sense of accomplishment and mine with pride :)