Making - Learning by doing - Model Toy car

Maker education  fosters curiosity, tinkering and iterative learning, which in turn leads to better thinking through better questioning. - Laura Fleming

We have already discussed about Tinkering and creativity. But, have you heard of "Tinquiry"?  Tinquiry = Tinkering + Inquiry.
Tinkering is a marriage of play and inquiry. Children learn by tinkering/making.

Here is one of instances where our twins learnt to observe everyday world around us more closely by making.

One day Nidhi brought out a styrofoam block and asked "Mom, May I use this?". "For what?". "This looks like a bus, I ll build a bus with this."
"How?" "I ll just add four wheels and draw some windows."
"How will you add the wheels?"
She found some cylindrical foam blocks and taped them to the bottom of the styrofoam block.
She tested it out. "Oh no! the wheels don't move!" "How can we fix that?"  She brought out a toy car and observed its wheels closely. "I know! We need a stick between the wheels." "Yes, that is called an axle".
She picked two long skewer, inserted it into the styrofoam block and capped them with foam cylinders for wheels.
She tested it out again. "Mom, it still doesn't move." Back to observing the model toy car. She figured out that the axle spins easily inside the chassis. How can we make this? she was puzzled. I suggested that she use straws below the chassis.
We found another soap box to try our newer model. Here is a pic journal of the car model making.

Adding straws to make axles rotate freely

Adding axles

Inserting wheels using foam cylinder blocks

Model soap box car with freely rotating wheels ready!

Sid and Nidhi both made multiple cars and we raced them on a cookie sheet ramp.
We learnt about wheel axle assembly of a car by making a model. A lot of problem solving happened along the way such as , if the axles are too close to each other, the wheels cannot move.  A lot of inquiry happened.Why didn't front wheels rotate as smoothly as the rear ones? Why the car steered to left? Does the length of axle affect the stability of the car? A great deal of learning and inquiry happened by letting them make on their own!

I would like to share another everyday object that they observed closely in next post.

 Till then, Happy Holidays! :)