Junkyard Derby

Things were a bit quiet at home this summer with most of our friends away on holiday.  So, along with the other kids still there, we decided to do something fun and challenging together.  We decided to have a "Junkyard Derby".  You see, our friends live right across the street from an empty lot, and every empty lot eventually turns into a junk yard or a trash heap.  Justin, our friend, takes the time to have some of the neighborhood boys rake the top of it into neat piles and light them on fire.  That way, at least from their front door, it looks nice.  Because there are not many kids that have toys here, the kids can make something to play with out of just about anything, and they often will make small toys with trash in the dump.  Just before leaving, Justin asked those boys to build some cars for him to take back to his family in the states.  This gave us the idea to have each of our own kids use things they found in the dump and make a car.  We planned a day to have the races, and everyone got busy thinking of design ideas.  Unfortunately, making a car that actually rolled or even went fast was a lot harder than we thought.  Brian, our "McGyver" began to make prototypes for us to model them after, and a week later, we had a design that everyone could follow.  After everyone decided what to build, it was fun to see the personalities come out in each design.  Eliana's car was a fish, with a mermaid riding on top.  John Hardy went traditional, and made a race car.  Chaya, who had just been cheering for her team on field day chose to make a 'duck mobile'.  And Hali, last minute, made a rocket car.

You'll have to stay posted to see what happened on race day.