Simple Machines: Levers

Once Blaze had a good understanding of what made something a simple machine, we started focusing on each kind of simple machine separately. We started this past week with the lever.

We read the following books:





I really like the series of books that Levers to the Rescue comes from. The way the book is worded makes it more exciting than most of the books about simple machines that we found. To add a little audience participation, I told Blaze to shout out "Levers to the Rescue" whenever he saw it on the page.



Blaze made two kinds of levers this week. The first one, he came up with on his own after we finished reading How can I experiment with a Lever?






For this next one, Blaze demonstrated how to make a plastic spoon catapult for the little neighbor boy. All the straw that the workmen have spread on our barren backyard was getting in the way, but the project did work in the end.








We also watched this short video that explained levers: