Wobbly Woodpecker
I’ve just finished reading “The Woodcock“, the brilliant first novel by my good friend Richard Smyth, and in his honour, I’ve made a new bird-themed toy, which I hope he’ll… Read more Wobbly Woodpecker →
Simple Spinning Top
The first home-made “toy” I remember being shown as a child was a spinning top made from a matchstick jammed into a lychee seed. I didn’t include it in my book because I didn’t want to include anything made from inaccessible materials, but I recently came up with the design in the video below which is so simple you can make it in a matter of seconds. I don’t know if I’m the first person to do this – other people have certainly made spinning tops from bottle lids, but… Read more Simple Spinning Top →
Water Whirler
EXTRAS: Here’s great short video from the Met Office on how tornadoes form: MORE GOOD STUFF: Click here for more activities. I’ll be publishing more videos of activities from my book over the coming weeks. Check back here, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my YouTube channel to make sure you don’t miss them.
Home-Made Helicopter
Extras: Obviously, real helicopters don’t work quite like a paper one because they have engines… but if the engine fails, a real helicopter doesn’t just fall out of the sky, because, like the paper helicopter, its blades can “autorotate” and help land the helicopter safely. Here’s great video showing why, contrary to what famous scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson has said, a helicopter which loses its engine does NOT “turn into a brick”: After you’ve tried your own experiments, watch this great video where “2BrokeScientists” investigate how a paper helicopter works… Read more Home-Made Helicopter →
Handy Harmonica
A harmonica was one of the first musical instruments ever taken into space and it can also be the first musical instrument that your child makes, using this very simple method using two ice lolly (popsicle) sticks and some rubber bands. The “music” you get out of this will depend on your skill as both a maker and musician – it’s fairly straightforward to get three different notes out of the simple make shown in the video but, as with all the “marvellous machines” in the book, there’s plenty of… Read more Handy Harmonica →
Deep-Water Diver
If you build this just right, by getting the water bottle as full as possible, you can make the diver go down with a barely perceptible squeeze of the bottle, which then allows you to pretend you’re controlling the diver’s movement with the power of your mind… Putting a few marks on the bottle with a permanent marker might help you turn this into a game – can you get the diver to stop at a particular height? Build two of them and you can race someone else up and… Read more Deep-Water Diver →
Vortex Cannon and Smoke-Ring Machine
Here’s another home-made version of something you can buy in the shops – the vortex cannon is great fun to play with, and has lots of scope for inventing games which require you to knock things over with a gust of air. As I show in the video, if you’ve got some incense, it’s easy to use the same device to make smoke-rings! See if you can make a big ring and then send a small ring flying through it… TOP TIP: If you don’t have a plastic bottle to… Read more Vortex Cannon and Smoke-Ring Machine →
Bewildering Bean
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” is a phrase known as Clarke’s Third Law, put forward by the science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke in his book Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible. This “bewildering bean” is about as far from “advanced” technology as you can get but, to the unsuspecting observer, it genuinely looks like magic. TOP TIP: I didn’t do this in the video, but colouring in the bean template before making it is another way to make this activity… Read more Bewildering Bean →
Rubber-band Racer
This may be my favourite “make” from the book – as I explain in the video, I love that you can take scrap materials and make a “pull back” car, like the ones you can buy from a shop, and see exactly how it works. I’ve seen young children make these and witnessed their joy when they get theirs working – the same as mine when I first made one and, in fact, every time I’ve made one since, because it’s just so satisfying. EXTRAS: If you liked making this car,… Read more Rubber-band Racer →