A couple months ago we were at the bookstore and I let all the kids pick out a book, in an effort to continue to encourage reading. Alex, my oldest, came to me with this book and asked if it fell under the category of "book approved by Dad for purchase" (because some books don't fall into this category, like books that are basically a toy with a small book glued to the edge. Electronic speaking books don't into this category either)
My first thought was, "no, let's pick out a book that's a little more 'literary' ". The more I thought about it though, my main goal was reading, and there was no doubt that he would read this book, as it was a topic that was of real interest to him. So I allowed him to purchase it with the stipulation that he could build nothing in the book without coming to me for approval first. Things like fire kites and tennis ball mortars will never get approval.
It worked. He's definitely been reading the book. I allowed him to make paper match rockets once. Those were unimpressive if I remember correctly. A more apt name might have been paper match duds. His next main project from the book was a air compressed potato cannon. I gave approval of this project, but told him he could not start building it until after his school summer reading projects were completed. This involved reading two books and writing a report/answering essay questions for each book. It's amazing how much better of a student Alex is when he has the right motivation. On Tuesday Alex finish his projects and, as promised, I took him to Home Depot to purchase al the items needed to make his potato cannon. We put it together yesterday evening and allowed it to dry overnight. This is the finished product....
Basically you put a potato in one end, and, using a bicycle pump or air compressor, fill up the other end with air (It has a pressure guage to make sure you don't put too much air into it). Turn the valve to release the air and POOF, there goes a flying potato. We'll see how it works tonight.
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