Fun with building and engineering!

My sister-in-law, Jennifer, gifted us with this book aptly named Steve Caney's Ultimate Building Book.  We were taking a break from life and earth sciences this year and decided to go over structures and building and this book was incredible!  There are explanatory sections dealing with different types of structures written in a moderate-level style accessible to a wide variety of reading levels and each section is followed by an incredible number of projects using some quite unique building systems.  We have explored brick and block structures using sugar cubes with homemade mortar, jell-o and knox ice cube blocks, and even mini marshmallows (although the success of that one was very much in doubt but the mistakes were very tasty!).  Right now we are going over space frame structures and have used straws and string to build with and one of our favorites so far: Sticky Q-sticks.  These are cotton swabs with the ends dipped in rubber cement which makes them quite adhesive but re-positionable.  Here are some of our favorite Sticky Q-stick structures with thanks to summer helpers: Scott and Janny!