Thanks, LeMay Car Museum: Building a Solar Toy Car

Whenever I see something interesting that I think Sean would enjoy, and if we are able to do it, I sign us up.

We've gotten memberships to several places in the past couple of years. Last year we were members at the zoo, and I wish we could go enough to make it worth it to get another membership. It just didn't work for us because their hours in the fall are so short that we could never make it before closing time when he was in school. Now that we are homeschooling we could, but we've decided to branch out and do other memberships this year.

A couple of months ago I took Sean to the Pacific Science Center, and decided that would be worth the membership because we plan to go about once a month.

In the Spring, Chuck bought a membership to the LeMay Car Museum in Tacoma. We've already used it a lot. A friend of his came in from Florida and we were able to take him, and then when our guests came in for the wedding we used it then, too.

I received a notice about some of their programs and saw that there was a family workshop to build a toy solar car. That sounded fun, so I signed us up and we went on Saturday morning. Sean and Chuck worked together to build the cars. Lilly was supposed to do it, but she was being dropped off there later and didn't make it in time to build one.

Sean had a lot of fun building his solar car.
We brought it home and he has had a great
time taking it outside and watching it go. 

Each table had a couple of kits to build the cars. There were no tools required, but the instructor gave some tips for making sure the car would run straight and not sideways. The car was a simple construction with a plastic corrugated board for the base, two tiny dowels for the axels, four wooden dics with a hole in them for the wheels, two small wooden rectangular pieces which held the eye screws that were screwed into the base so that the axels slipped through the eyes, and then the motor and mechanism that hold the rubber band, which made the wheels turn, and of course the solar panel on top of the car.

Sean had fun working with Chuck to put it together, and he was interviewed by someone who works for the museum newsletter. The guy asked Sean a lot of questions about what he likes to do, what he wants to be when he grows up, etc. Sean's answer to his question about what he wants to be was: Pilot/Doctor/Game Creator.

The museum is just starting its education component and the director said in the next couple of months they will have a lot more going on. There are some interesting student workshops for various age groups. I'd like to take him again for their "fuels for the future,"class, and the pinewood derby. I downloaded one of their classroom pdfs called "Science on Wheels." If you're interested, you can find it here.

There are some things you can do at home or in the classroom, but part of it includes a skit at the museum where people act out different parts of the engine. I'm sure it's fun. I'm going to try to get a homeschool group together and see if we can participate in it.