Welcome to Summer! Since there are no official Daring Boys Club meetings over the summer, I’m going to add a few of my own adventures to keep the blog current and perhaps inspire a few Daring Family activities.
As a mother of 4 boys, I consider us to be our own little club. I’m always looking for fun activities that keep the boys entertained while using their body and mind. I was inspired by a post about a DIY Summer Camp on Power of Moms. We’ve tweaked it a bit to suit our needs, but it is pretty close to how she laid out her summer. Our morning are filled with the “have-to’s” (chores, reading, working toward a summer goal, doing something physical, and getting in the baby’s nap). Our afternoons are generally structured like so:
- Make-it-Monday (craft, experiment, any project they can dream up with items around the house)
- Take-a-trip-Tuesday (car trips, long hikes, etc.)
- Wet Wednesday (sprinkler, parks with water play features, rivers, the shore)
- Think-it-Thursday (learning about something new, or delving into something they’ve been exposed to)
- Friend Friday (play dates galore!)
Today was our first Make-it-Monday. We threw eggs off our deck onto the driveway. Well, first we constructed containers to absorb the impact in hopes that our eggs wouldn’t break. I found a great set of guidelines here.
Egg Drop #1: A hard shell with padding. He also attached a whirlygig propeller to the top to slow decent, since we outlawed parachutes.
Egg Drop #2: A small box filled with sponges to absorb the impact.
Egg Drop #3: A cardboard frame wrapped with rubber bands to suspend the egg.
The impact, dropped from a height of 15 feet onto concrete:
The results:
Egg Drop #1: SMASH! 
Egg Drop #2: SMASH!
Egg Drop #3: Popped out, rolled down the driveway and cracked!
None of the eggs survived unscathed. We’ve decided to re-think our designs and have another egg drop at the end of the summer. Now YOU go drop some eggs off a deck!
I love the idea of your DIY Summer Camp. It’s so much better than having the kids mull about aimlessly. The egg drop project was an excellent choice to start things off. It looks like they really invested time and thought into their designs. You might have emerging structural engineers on your hands. It’ll be interesting to see how the second egg drop turns out, now that they have the advantage of hind-sight.