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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Have Fun with Giant Coloring Pages

Shark Week generally happens in July, but any time is a good time to learn more about sharks.

First, start with some fun whale facts like these from Kids Craft Room. Here I learned about the dwarf lantern shark, which is the smallest shark and only grows to about 6-8 inches (about 15-20 cm) long. It also emits light. How cool is that?

Natural Beach Living has some great printable shark information guides, where kids can learn about different kinds of sharks, match the facts to the pictures, or print out doubles and do a shark memory game.

Living Life an Learning has some great shark activity pages including the parts of a shark, types of sharks, a crossword puzzle and more. Also check out their parts of a shark and word scramble download, and a life cycle worksheet.

Learn about how sharks float with this great activity from JDaniel4’s Mom.

Need more facts about sharks? This fact pact from The WOLFe PACK on Teacher Pay Teachers includes fact sheets, a printable flip book, informational text, vocabulary, comprehension questions and more.

Living Montessori Now has a great collection of shark themed activities with a Montessori inspired twist. You’ll find a shark roll and cover, shark phonics and lots more shark activities Deb has collected from all over the Internet.

Remember the “Sharknado” movie? A Few Shortcuts turned the combination of sharks and tornadoes into a fun science activity. You’ll need a bottle connector for this project but otherwise should have everything you need on hand. Use their template to make your sharks out of aluminum foil. So fun!

You can also do some shark themed coloring with these coloring pages from Encouraging Moms at Home. Or make a cool 3D shark with this template from korkotak. And there are tons of different shark crafts collected in this post from Kids Activities Blog.

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