Lego Challenge #23

Quest #23 - Cityscape

A cityscape is the urban equivalent of a landscape.

Design a cityscape out of LEGO. It can be a city or town that you know, or a mysterious, made up place. I'd love to hear about your city, so include a little description about it when you send in your photo.

Jacob built this all by himself! There's an ocean with an oil platform and tanker ship. The city has a church, skyscraper, tower, fire station, and little cars on the road.

Lego Challenge #22

**This was borrowed DIRECTLY from this site.** 

Quest #22 - Display Your Art

Can you design something out of LEGO that will display your own art?

You may want to look around the house and see if you have some of your artwork already done and ready to be displayed, or you might want to make something new. A drawing, painting, even a sculpture.

Your LEGO creation may be a traditional picture frame, or it might be something quite elaborate and unexpected.

Jacob drew a special picture to go with this challenge.

Lego Challenge #21

**This was borrowed DIRECTLY from this site.**

Quest #21 - Buoyancy

Can you create a marine vessel out of LEGO that floats?

You may need to experiment with several designs until you create one that works the way you want it to.

I would like your photo submission to show your creation in water, either floating, or perhaps in its sunken state, whichever you choose.

If you would like to take this a step further, you can place heavier objects like marbles or coins in your boat to see how many it can hold before it sinks. I'd love to hear all the details and so would everyone else!

This was fun! Of course the first attempts sunk because they were top heavy. Then we looked at a one-piece lego canoe we have (it came with the camper set). It floated so how could we copy that shape? 

Here is what the boys came up with.

Needless to say, they played in the sink a lot today!

Things That Are Too Wonderful to be Owned

So we read this amazing book called "Who Owns the Sun?" that was written and illustrated by a 14 year old girl in 1988. We decided to try and copy her watercolour paintings. The boys each chose their favourite painting in the book. We used our homemade liquid watercolours to paint the backgrounds... waited for them to dry and then used traditional watercolours to paint the foregrounds. They turned out wonderful.

Original "Who owns the wind?" by Stacy Chbosky

"Who owns the wind?" by Daniel

Original "Who owns the sun?" by Stacy Chbosky

"Who owns the sun?" by Jacob

Homemade Liquid Watercolours

So, first off, this wasn't my idea... I saw it on Pinterest.

I was helping clean out the church Sunday school room and offered to go through the giant container of markers and throw out the no good ones. Now I must confess I had ulterior motives... Namely homemade liquid watercolour paints. I've never tried liquid watercolours but apparently they are great for kids. Anyways, the boys helped me sort the markers into still good and not good piles. Then we took the not good pile and divided them into green, blue, purple, yellow, and orange/red. We threw out the black and brown ones, but in hindsight I think we should have used them too.  Anyways, then we threw out all the lids and put our markers into jars with water, like this:

We let them sit for almost one week....

Voilà! Our very own homemade paints! Check back to see how we used them....

Lego Challenge #17

**This was borrowed DIRECTLY from this site.**

Can you show Metamorphosis in action with Lego?

Transform your design into another in as many or as few stages as you want.

An idea to start your creative process might be to make two objects; the first stage, and the last stage of metamorphosis. Then design an object that has elements of both in it, to show the in-between stage.

This can represent an actual living thing, or it can be a totally invented entity.

Jacob: It's a dragon. It blows fire and has powerful legs and pokes on his body. He shrinks into a card with a mouth and eyes. His wings and tail shrink too.

Daniel: It's a transformer. When he turns into a car there are helmets on his eyes. He turns into a car at night. There are three steering wheels: one for the flashing lights, one to move the eyes, and one for the wheels.

Lego Challenge #18

**This was borrowed DIRECTLY from this site.**

Quest #18 - Flags

What is your favorite flag? Is it a flag of a country, a state, a province, a city or a town? Or is it one you've invented?

Create this flag design (you could use a 2-dimensional mosaic approach), or use the colour or design of the flag to inspire you in any number of ways.

Tell me about your creation and why you picked this particular flag.

The boys worked together to build several flags and Jacob wrote down all the ones they made. I have no idea which one is which though!

LEGO Challenge #14

**This was borrowed DIRECTLY from this site.**

Quest #14 - Ancient Monument

This weeks challenge is to re-create or be inspired by an Ancient Monument.

An Ancient monument is an early historical structure worthy of preservation.

There are Ancient Monuments found all over the world, I look forward to seeing which one inspired you!

Be sure to tell me which Ancient Monument you were inspired by and why. Where this monument exists in the world and anything else you'd like to add about your creation.

-- So I changed this challenge a little bit. Jacob has had a tiny bit of exposure to Egyptian pyramids but other than that, we haven't really learned about anything "ancient." So I just called it the Monument Challenge, and said that a monument was a historically important building to a country. 

LEGO Challenge #13

**This was borrowed DIRECTLY from this site.**

Quest #13 - Earth Day

April 22nd is Earth Day.

What does Earth Day mean to you? Create something that reflects your ideas about Earth Day. It might be something that is inspired by the list below, or it might be some sort of invention that helps the Earth in a certain way?

Here is a list of words that remind me of Earth Day, you may have other words that inspire your creation.

Recycling

Wilderness

Protection of Animals and Wildlife

Deterioration of the environment

Oil Spills

Power Plants

Pesticides

Global Warming

Clean Energy

Pollution

Habitat Destruction

Bees

Trees

Ecosystem

Landfills

Litter

Oceans

Oxygen

Preserve

Rainforest

Reuse

Well, it obviously isn't anywhere close to Earth Day but if we did't do these in order someone would definitely throw a stink! :)

Daniel immediately said he was going to build people protecting endangered animals. Specifically in Africa. He built a baby cheetah, a lion, an elephant, a giraffe, and an anaconda.

Jacob built a power plant spewing black smoke into the air.