A Pile of Pieces

Our pile of tank pieces!

Well Spring Break is almost over and we have had a great week.  The first day we spent as a library day. (We didn't actually go to the library, we just had a reading party in our living room.)   The next day was spent outside and working on individual projects.  We celebrated Wednesday by going out to lunch and going shopping.  I don't really like going to the mall, so we went to the craft store to pick up some fun projects for the kids. It was hard for them to choose, there were so many cool choices. But I gave them a budget that they had to stay within and that helped to narrow things down a bit.  It's funny how the three of them pick different kinds of projects.  Jessica always wants canvases or other painting supplies.  Alyssa likes more simple but colorful drawing and art projects. Ryan  picks engineering intensive works. Of course, being 6 means that when he picks a project it is also for me.  He chose two 3D wooden puzzles, one of penguins and the other a tank.  I thought they looked really cool, but not being an engineer myself I hoped that the directions would be thorough.  As soon as we got home he wanted to start on them.  Luckily we started with the simple penguin.  Ryan got all the pieces out and my heart sank when I read the directions:  "Look on the picture to familiarize yourself with where the pieces go."   UH OH!  I guess when you pay 5 bucks for something with 30 pieces you should figure it's too good to be true.  There was a diagram of all the pieces with numbers, but no numbers on the actual pieces.  It said to match the numbers to put them together.  Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make any sense to me!

Ryan finishing the tread.

Painting the penguin

It took a while but we finally got most of the penguin together.  My husband, an engineer, came home and Ryan asked him to help.  "These aren't directions!  This is silly!" He said in frustration.   Ryan actually figured out the problem and he finished it after dinner.  We still had the tank to build.  That was going to have to wait until morning.

Finished...just needs paint.

Thursday, Ryan and I spent most of the day building the tank from an imposing pile of pieces.  We made it through a number of frustrating moments.  At one point Ryan had built a whole section of tread only to find that we had used the wrong pieces together.  But we persevered and by nightfall we had accomplished our mission.  We were both extremely proud of what we built together.

Kathy