Build a Da Vinci Bridge with Your Kids

My daughter’s school has a tinkering lab where the kids get to go to do STEM stuff, build things and work on projects.

Recently one of the classes made a giant Da Vinci bridge, a self-supporting bridge design developed by Leonardo Da Vinci around 1486.

Their version was made with large pieces of wood and stands several feet high, but if you’d like to make a smaller-scale version, check out this tutorial from Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls.

Her version is made with craft sticks, and you do have to glue them together in advance to make pieces that are long enough to build the bridge from, but other than that the bridge can be put together without adhesives, and it makes a really strong structure, too.

This is a great engineering project for kids, and you could give them the materials and see if they can figure out how to make a bridge out of them before showing them how Da Vinci did it. You can also test your bridge to see how much weight it holds, and talk about why such a bridge might be useful (the original application was meant to be for use in war, so the army could build a bridge, cross it with their supplies and take it down easily so the enemy couldn’t follow).

Have you ever made a Da Vinci bridge? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo: Frugal Fun for Boys and Girls.]

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Learning about Women in STEM

Every year at my daughter’s school I think it’s the second or third graders do an activity where they have to disguise a turkey to keep it from being eaten at Thanksgiving. The kids draw the disguise and write a little bit about why they thing that would be an effective way for the turkey to hide. There were some really creative ideas, including one year one was dressed as an eraser for some reason?

If this is an activity you’d like to try with kids in the classroom or at home, check out these turkey in disguise printables to get you started.

If you want to keep it totally basic you can just print out a turkey in disguise coloring sheet like these from The Best Ideas for Kids. There are a few different options kids can use to decorate and they write in what their turkey is disguised as.

My Bored Toddler has a similar printable that just asks what the child will cover the turkey with to hide it. This one would be fun to use in a plastic sleeve or laminated, then you can use it with playdough, cover it with leaves or glass gems or draw on it and use it again.

Easy Peasy and Fun has a paper doll-inspired take on turkey disguises, with printable costumes you can take on and off to hide your turkey quickly. The disguise is attached to the regular turkey with a tab so you can flip it up and down to have a regular turkey or one disguised as a peacock, football player, astronaut and more. This one includes a writing activity so students can explain why they picked the disguise they did and why they think it will work.

Red Ted Art has a set of 12 disguises you can buy (or you can get six random costumes for free) that come in both color and black and white. Kids can just assemble the turkeys or they can color them and then put them together. The set includes a basketball player, pirate, chef, unicorn, mermaid, robot and more. It doesn’t include a writing activity but you could also have kids write about which character they picked and why.

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