Puppet Challenge

While perusing the goodies on a past issue of the Hands On Homeschooling Carnival, I came across a link to this great blog Think! which is all about fun, hands-on challenges for kids to solve. The whole idea is creative thinking and problem solving, and of course enjoying the process, which scores major points in my homeschooling theory.

As firm believers that learning (and life in general) should be as fun as possible, we love this kind of stuff in our house! I immediately got my kids set up with this puppet challenge.  It was posted weeks ago, and we are late on the bandwagon as usual, but who cares? It's educational and entertaining at any time, right?
 

The challenge was basically to make a puppet using 24 inches of string, 4 straws, 2 objects of your choice, 4 paperclips, and 4 index cards. They had to use all of the materials, (markers were allowed, scissors were not) and the puppet needed to have at least 3 moving parts.

My kids got busy right away, and were happily occupied with it for a bit of time. I was able to use this time to catch up on a little writing, and not feel like I was neglecting my homeschooling duties. They were independantly engaged in creating and problem solving- homeschooling at it's best!

I love seeing how differently people will solve the same problem using the same materials. My two very different kids came up with different shapes, different sizes, and different moving parts for their puppets.

The pictures aren't the best, but the challenge was fun nonetheless. We are definitely looking forward to more of these challenges in the future! Check out the link to Think! to find challenges for your family.