Playing with blocks, balls, cars, and slinkies

A lovely evening was had by all a few nights ago on the back of a grab bag of kids toys and a free moment that found all three Bijurs sitting on the cramped messy floor of our second bedroom. Miriam has a hammer and workbench-type toy that holds wooden balls that when hit drop through to a lower level and roll out the side. She discovered at some point that the rubber seal that holds and releases the balls are weak enough that just pressing down on a ball will release it, and the hammer has since migrated to live with the other workbench toy, the one with pegs. One problem with the ball-based workbench is the finely turned balls have a tendency to roll and hide. So we set up a little corral of blocks. Which started as a parental project to avoid scrambling after rolling balls, but soon became a little zone of experimentation for the 30+ crowd on just how far and fast those balls roll and at what angles, and maybe if we jack up the back of the workbench a little with this here block can we generate enough force to bump that car across the floor? All the while the nominal owner and operator of these toys is delightedly replacing and popping the balls.

Then, entered the slinky. Our standard metal slinky made a perfect size tunnel for these particular balls, with perhaps half an inch of clearance. Stretched out, curved, looped back on itself, it provided an easily varied route for the balls to roll through. And held up propped against a tower of blocks, it provided the balls a much greater oomph. Now the littlest Bijur was up on her feet dropping balls into the slinky-snake's open mouth, watching it zoom around and into the workbench's tunnel and out the other side into our maze of blocks. And it was good.

Eventually, we had a contraption, eerily similar to the rube goldberg machines built by the student teams I worked with via MIT, in which a ball would roll off the desk into the slinky (propped up by cross supports and hung at just the right angle by yarn), through the tunnel, hitting a car to roll into a house of blocks and onto Miriam's foot. And it was good.

Yesterday's run destination: DK's Donuts

Yesterday's menu:
breakfast: donuts
lunch: chickpeas and orzo
dinner: homemade linguini and bolognese