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This past summer I taught a mixed-age group of kids at Montessori Children's House near Seattle. We learned how bridges and cranes work and built several models. This is a cable-stayed bridge.
 Next we worked on a suspension bridge  A truss bridge came next. We used the drill press to drill holes in the plywood pieces.  Our last project was an 8ft long truss bridge made of cedar. It was strong enough to hold the whole class.
 They had a lot of fun using the BRIDGE BEAMS to build model cranes. They started small.
 Then we built a model with a boom that was over 4ft long. To build a truss bridge we drilled holes in the ends of pieces of plywood. Then we used an orbital sander to sand smooth the edges. The kids learned how to use wrenches to connect the pieces with nuts and bolts. In some places we had to use C-clamps to hold the parts as we screwed them together. |