Art-bots

School was out on Wed. for Veteran’s Day. I signed the kids up for a class at the art museum where they made “artbots”. They took electric toothbrushes and removed the tooth brush part leaving them with a handle and an oscillating motor. They duct taped those into sections of pool noodles, then used rubber bands to attach three or more markers for legs. So when you turned on the motor and set them on a piece of paper they jumped and spun around on the marker legs making fun patterns. 

All three kids got to be in the same class, but what they each brought home speaks volumes about their personalities.  S brought her completed artbot home to show us just exactly how well it worked. J brought home a pile of modified pieces of what had once been his artbot and tested every surface in, on & around the house with the little vibrating end of the hacked off toothbrush to see which one’s got his parents to flip out and threaten him with extreme punishment the fastest. AJ not only brought home his shorter artbot, but also every extra scrap of pool noodle, elastic bands and extra toothbrushes motors that he could scavenge from their teacher and classmates.

AJ also discovered that the spinning end of the ex-toothbrushes will get massively tangled up if you try sticking it in your hair. Thank Heavens it was his own hair and not his sister’s! And thus he has had his second hair cut in a less than a month (first haircut was an attempt to blend the wicked chunk, all the way to the scalp, that he just whacked out of the very front of his hair for reasons he has never been able to explain.)