Our homeschool co-op hosts a “Makers Market” once a month. All of the kids create, build, and bake up some inventory and then gather together with their blankets and tables to buy, sell, barter, and trade.
It’s a wonderful exploration of economy and entrepreneurship!
This month, my 8 year old son decided he wanted to build spinning tops to sell.
We found this tutorial here but made a few changes of our own. Instead of cardboard and tape we used.
– 2″ wood rounds (from the craft department at Walmart
– 1/4″ dowels (which fit perfectly in the pencil sharpener
– Wood glue (to firmly anchor the stick in the wood circle)
The first step was to drill a hole (using a 1/4″ drill bit) in the center of the wood. O’ quickly discovered that simply eyeballing what “center” was made a very lopsided top that struggled to keep spinning straight.
So I showed him how to measure two chords the same length, and then make a diagonal line between them, drilling a hole where those lines intersect.
When I started using familiar words from prior geometry lessons (like, chord, diameter, intersecting lines) he lit up! “Mom! I know these names!”
For the drilling, I suggested a clamp to hold the wood disc in place. It didn’t seem fully needed though, and he ended up just holding it in place. For a child with less drill experience it would be best to use a clamp to keep their hands out of the way.
For the dowels, we used tree pruners and cut them about 4″ long. Then using a mechanical pencil sharpener (you have less control with electric and we found the points became too sharp) we lightly sharpened the ends to give a nice spinning point.
After some decorating (we just used colored sharpies) it was time to test them out! This is the point that he realized using some wood glue around the stick would help stabilize it and result in a longer spin time.
To finish them, after the glue dries, you could spray it with a sealer, but we decided to just leave them as is.
This project was an unexpected and super fun way to refresh on the parts of a circle and line lessons, and would be great follow up work to have available! Being able to apply these skills to a fun project really brought it all to life for my kids and inspired them to explore geometry in other ways too!
If you’re interested in the Montessori geometry lessons I highly recommend Mainly Montessori’s Timeline for the full sequence. You can find that HERE (AFF link)
If you’re looking to just dip your toes, you can find some free video lessons HERE
Or hop over to this post HERE for a free download of the Cultivating Dharma albums
Kindling Kids Montessori Home School 