Have you heard of a little thing called a Beyblade? They were very popular about 20 years ago when my own boys were small and have had a recent upsurge in popularity again. Unfortunately, they are quite expensive and not all the children have them, although those that do are very generous about sharing theirs. Both Team Awesome and Mrs. Farber's Friends have become obsessed with Beyblades and have been creating them with almost every building toy in both classrooms. Unifix cubes, Brain Flakes, K'Nex, magnets, blocks- you name it and they've tried to make a Beyblade from it. It was a losing battle trying to convince the children to build something new as they persisted with their obsession. So Mrs. Farber and I threw up our hands and decided that if we couldn't beat them, to join them! We gave them a number of challenges- to build the tallest Beyblade, the tiniest one, a Beyblade that would spin longer than all the others or the largest one. They chose their challenge and planned out their Beyblade accordingly on paper before we took all of our materials to the gym to build and challenge others. We discovered that sometimes our plans and materials did not work as anticipated (playdough didn't work so well), so this week we revisited the challenges, adjusted our plans and retested them, making tweeks as needed. We built, we battled, we rebuilt, we had a blast!
