BC with Planes Trains & Automobiles...

It has been some time since Bryce and I have been able to have some quality time engineering...Here are some of our tools today.

Most of what was done today was from his mind, "Poppy can we do this, Poppy how about we try this"...
In the last year I am amazed at how his knowledge base has increased, he understood what he wanted to do and what would not necessarily work.

At one point I asked him to draw what he wanted to build, it took a little encouragement but... We now had a pulley system in place to run his automobiles on the patio working from the deck above in both directions.

We tried various theories/ideas and fine tuned it into reality.
Zip lines for his jet and his tri-plane (adding weight to the jet via a bag of rocks).
Then a way to pull the planes back up to the launch point from the deck.
Into the shed we went looking for our build material. Bryce sees a roll of weed whacker string and asks if this would work for the plane zip line, heck YEAH! Brilliant.
I would not/did not think of this.
(Dental floss sucked after the first try, tree to tree...)
Soap to make the planes slide on the zip line???
Into the house Bryce went and came out with a bottle of dish soap. This worked very well for the plane zip lines, other than everything became slippery as we worked...
We tried string, then no string (drag problems) fishing line, moving limbs on the trees, stop points, lubrication and on and on, a young mind let loose, no boundaries were set.

A pulley system for the automobiles, working both forward and backwards and on we went.
Everything had to work form the deck, period.
Poppy was complaining about how much he had to bend over and that his back hurt...

Trial and error, over and over... For me it was interesting to see how he had already solved a problem before we discussed the problem and then tried fix the problem. All he needed was someone to ask him without ramifications, what he thought would work. Once he opened up and did not feel that he was going to be chastised for what he thought, we would discuss our options, mono a mono.
A whole day devoted to an eleven year old's mind. With someone encouraging them to let go...

How refreshing.