The Long Stick: plearning with stuff they find lying around

Last week the snowflakes found an extremely long stick in the dry creek bed up the back, and dragged it to the back lawn. 

They decided that the best thing to do with it was planting it. Unsurprisingly (to me), it didn't stand up, so the kids spent about 20 minutes moving half the woodpile to stack around the base of the pole for support. When they finally got it stabilised (by putting more ballast on the opposite side from the wind), they crashed it down "to see what noise it will make". Then they repeated the activity but this time planted it in a purpose-made hole in the sandpit. They discovered that wetting the sand made it easier to bed the bottom of the pole in, and they now didn't need any pieces of wood around it.

The next day, the pole was used a lot for practicing climbing. Snowflake #1 contrived to climb up almost halfway, #2 not so high, and #3 had a go with the others holding her up. 

Later, it was down on the ground again, and I thought interest had waned, but no, a few days later it was resurrected as a seesaw. This wasn't quite a success, as the stick was too flexible and tended to bend rather than rock up and down, however, after a bit of trial and error, the snowflakes did manage to adjust the leverage to compensate for their different weights. We also planned how we could make a better seesaw.

Subjects unschooled: physics, engineering, physical education, strategic planning and teamwork.