Return of the Dangerous Book for Boys

This week Zander dragged out the Dangerous Book for Boys again. I say again, because it was gift to me from my Dad for Father's Day three years ago. At that time, we used the book as the inspiration to make bows and arrows, learn (or re-learn, in my case) how to tie some knots, and most importantly, to build a tree house:

Tree House

This time around, Zander is a much better and more active reader, so he came out with the book one morning and had a whole bunch of new ideas! He flagged about twenty pages.

We started with making paper airplanes -- since Adon is a major paper airplane engineer, we were interested to see if the DB's "Greatest Paper Airplanes in the World" lived up to their billing. We like the Bulldog Dart, but that's about as far as we got before we moved on to the next thing, Morse Code.

Zander is writing a book in which one of the main characters is a space alien who speaks in Morse Code (since we humans can't understand his language). Zan translated the phrase "leave now" using the book, then wanted to play marbles.

Finally, we decided to try to make the homemade battery. We needed 10 quarters, 10 squares of blotter paper, 10 squares of aluminum foil, small gauge copper wire, an LED, apple cider vinegar, and salt. We got everything together but realized we still needed apple cider vinegar, so we had to put this one off for a couple of days. When we finally got the vinegar, we soaked the blotter paper in a vinegar and salt solution and stacked foil/paper/quarters until we had a pile. We attached the wires to the foil on one end and the last quarter on the other, then attached the wires to the LED, and... viola! Nothing happened.

Zan was bummed after waiting so long. Not being sure what the problem was, I told him we might need a different solution, or thicker blotter paper (to hold more solution), or better wires. He wasn't havin' it. In this, he is no scientist -- he doesn't want to sit around all day trying things, he just wants the cool trick to HAPPEN. I may go back to it myself, just to figure out what went wrong. Adon has supplies to make a little more robust battery in his science kit, so maybe I'll get him going on that, and have Zan participate in order to see a little different approach that will probably actually work! He might not sit still for it for long, because what he REALLY wants to make from the DB is a go kart! :)

Off we go to garage sales, looking for wheels --