Never make a plan

Well, never make a detailed plan at least. The devil is in the details or so they say. The moment I make a plan with page number and daily assignments with all details included, we get a nice surprise. This week’s surprise was a stomach virus. That blew my well planned and productive week out of the water. Now I’m happy just to get math, grammar, and spelling done.



The good news is that everyone has had it so no one else can get sick. The bad news is that I have 3 days to help 2 boys finish their pinewood derby cars for cub scouts.



The basic shapes are already cut out. They just need to sand and paint the car. Plus we have to sand the axels.



But not before we test it out first.



Everything becomes a teachable moment. Pine wood derby cars have turned into a lesson on friction.



My oldest son wants to know if polishing the axels actually reduces the friction enough to make the car race faster or if I make his Daddy do all that work for nothing. I told him to make up the experiment. He’s currently trying to determine how to test a single variable. I’ll see how long it takes him to figure out that he can’t just test his car against his brother’s. That he will have to test his car with one set of unpolished axels against his car (and same wheels) with a set of polished axels. He’ll also have to find a way to determine which is faster since we don’t have that accurate of a stopwatch.