Building a time machine

That's right, we are building a time machine. Inspired by our recent trip to the mountains to visit Nana. We had a great time despite the rain. Cammy enjoyed it......especially watching Nana's cable TV (it was verrrry rainy). She got to watch a show called Time Warp Trio and got interested in time travel. The whole way back from the mountains she was rapping about everything and talking about what she would do if she was a kid in Time Warp Trio. Karma was so entertained she didn't cry once......for five hours in a car!!
We started our project today. After a few review lessons today we went on a scavenger hunt for materials to make our time machine with. We got a great big box from a local heating and air place. It was big enough for Cammy to kneel in ( I secretly wish it was bigger so I could get in too). To make it a little bigger we taped a sturdy banana box to the top and cut out a hole for Cammy's head. I keep a box of odd sculpture stuff like cd spindles, bottle caps, broken toy parts etc. in the garage because you never know when you are going to need spare parts for a time machine.
We are going to the Renaissance festival in Charlotte, NC at the end of the month. I have to teach a workshop for the Red Hat society and the girls and I will be topping the trip off with the festival. I have been to one in Sarasota, FL and it was great. Cammy is going to love it. I wanted to work the subject of the Renaissance into her lessons but it felt like an awkward leap from our current studies but the time machine solves that. Now instead of feeling like an awkward leap we are simply jumping back in time with our new time machine. That's all!
Cammy has been building great block towers and asking about Leonardo Da Vinci, so I guess it's a good fit right now anyway. To start the time machine journey off right we rented Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and made some popcorn. After taking a few test spins through the centuries and encountering dinosaurs and dragons Cammy decided she wanted to work on "What do you call it mom....the outside of the space shuttle....you know the part that keeps it from burning up? The musilage?" "The fuselage," I say(while I'm thinking how does she know this stuff?...because she reads a dictionary for fun in the car). So we got out the tin foil and some glue sticks and duct tape and got part of the box covered in a protective shell. She also wanted some rocket boosters so we taped on some cardboard tubes and now we are turbo charged. Since Cammy is the captain she said that apparently if you don't have security clearance to operate the time machine you will go straight up into space and the computers will go all wacky.
It must have been meant to be because I found a great book for a quarter entitled The Time Traveller Book of Knights and Castles by Judy Hindley.


Also on our last trip to the library Cammy checked out the book Ms. Frizzle's Adventures Medieval Castle by Joanna Cole.

We already had the book Castle by David Macaulay.

We are going to the library tomorrow to see what else we can find.