Farm-in-the-Blank Friday Finale'!!
On Friday mornings we remind all kids and adults of a few things:
- We only have 1.5 building sessions left. Priorities!
- Go slow. Working smart and safe is working fast.
The Field team decided that the plants should be more planty looking and we kicked off the morning painting! The scarecrow we made earlier in the week had put some sort of curse on the field though and soon I was working with plant zombies instead of tinkerers. They were pretty diligent plant zombies though.
Over at the Tractor garage, it was all hands on deck to get the front end of the Tractor mobile AND with steering. Gever laid out the plan for the day and everyone got to making the needed parts!
Right before lunch the Field team did a test to see If the towers we built were strong enough to pull the sun and bees across the field.
The bees were definitely pollinating the plants, but so was the Sun. We wanted the Sun up in the sky - not down burning the field up! There were two solutions: move the Sun holder rope up higher or Make the Sun lighter. Because of our time constraint, the kids decided that trimming the Sun down on the bandsaw would be the quickest, easiest solution.
An innovative solution to Global warming? Less Sun?
Then it was off to park to run our deadline jitters out, so we could focus in the afternoon!
The wheel team was back to work making hubs!
We cut a small moon off of our Sun, but it was still droopy! Lillian decided we should make the rope tighter!
Niko realizes we haven't made any corn yet and gets to work with Amanda!
The end of the day is fast approaching and the kids are hard at work!
Zara cuts off some protruding rod that will prevent the steering from working.
Lillian pulls the Sun-holder rope super tight....until we hear cracking in the towers!
All of the sudden, it's the end of the day!
We have corn!
We have 4 wheels!
The Tractor is huge and impressive and the team worked 15 minutes past the deadline to get the steering to function. They were focussed today and they had a plan, but they just needed a little more time.
With the families looking on, we hoisted the Tractor up off of it's supports and touched all 4 wheels on the ground. Together we rolled it forwards and back, as much excitement as it could handle on it's fresh wheels.
As we all gathered together for the last circle of the week, the kids were a little solemn. We could tell they were disappointed the Tractor wasn't as done as they had hoped, but they also knew how hard they had tried and how much work they had done. Everyone felt like they had done their best and that felt good.
No matter how "finished" our projects are by the end of the week the kids always know exactly what they would do if we had 5 more minutes, 60 more minutes, or 60 more days. We would only be finished when we wanted to be! It's that feeling of trying really hard and being proud of what you did during your week of tinkering that sticks with you after you have to say good bye to the wood and screws and new friends.