Last Saturday was the BSA STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) badge award day for our Pack. Who is in charge of STEM badges - me of course. Ugh. Sometimes being an engineer gets me into things that suck up my time even more!   Sam helped me A LOT and did a ton of the instruction. It is always better when we are working together :-)  That coupled with adult leaders from the pack that were super awesome made for a good time. The theme was SWING! and they learned about levers. The hardest part was to put together a 3hr class that had less than 3min of talking in a row - it is a group of boys.  All instruction I designed to be hands on.

Sam explaining how a Class 3 lever works.  Each boy had a chance. He rolled the wood to the front when it was Ben's turn to make it harder.

 

Ben showing a wedge vs a class 3 arm/ax combo.  So fun to be the instructors child. We DID NOT allow the other boys to try this.

Hard at work filling out his worksheet and answering the questions.

The boys made robo-arms and did relay races picking up and dropping off a cup using the arm to do the work. They had a blast.

 

In other news we started demo on the downstairs bath.  I have photos on my phone I'll upload in a bit.  I tried to removed the tile but tile on concrete - not so easy. After watching me struggle for about 1/2hr and removing 2 tiles he said "Give me that woman and go in the kitchen and cook dinner" (but didn't pound his chest). Ha! It was a riot!  I did go cook dinner, and he finished the entire room.  I know the roles of male / female in this house :-)
Here you can see the VERY small part I got done. Oh well, it is what it is!