Five classes of 3rd graders!!

AverageH wrote: In reply to pinchvalve: Wut? Why on earth would you strap them in and put a helmet on them? Just let them each have a turn sitting in the seat.

Yep just be sure the car is not in gear. They should be too short to reach the pedals anyway, so just instruct them to keep both hands on the wheel and not touch the shifter. Then go under the hood and rev the throttle while they're in the drivers seat.

Hal wrote: (from a retired middle school teacher).

(Guess what my last job was before becoming a brewer.)

Let them ask questions. You be surprised.

It should be fun, but I'm still glad my wife is in charge of it and giving the presentation.

I like the idea of setting up a digital camera and shooting pictures of the kids. Printing them on site is probably out, but I could get them on a DVD to give to the teacher.

Breaking the session up in the short segments should help a lot with keep their attention.

Thanks for the ideas, keep them coming.

i teach the elementry sunday school when my wife is out. she is an elementry school teacher. the breaking things up was what she agreed to the most, along with the questions.

my suggestion would be to also do a "pit crew" competition with the kids. get a couple of 1/4 drive speed handles and some 2x12 with studs and lig nuts arranged in a star pattern (my preffernce would be 5x4.5, but im a mpar guy). show the kids that this is how amature racers do it, and demonstrate the speed wrench. grab the three most rambunctious kids you see, line em up on the 2x12, and time them. challenge the rest of the class to beat their times.

my daughter, who is 4, loves being my pit crew. any time im changing/removing wheels, she wants to help. if she sees some off that she didnt help withm she gets mad.

also, do you have any in car footage wioth telemetry? could be a little bit of fun for the kids to see how the games compare to the real thing....

and when/where is this? i may be willing/able to bring a classic or two to help out if you want.

Kids loved my old sports racer, I 'spose because it sat on the ground and was on their level. No matter boy or girl, once they were in the driver seat they all made the vroom, vrooms.

A smaller/ shorter car may relate better to the youngins'

In reply to fasted58:

Lucky for me it doesn't get much shorter and smaller than this.

Thank you everyone for the ideas. I'm down to about 36 hours so if anyone has another suggestion, I'd welcome them. This should be.....interesting!

Nothing additional, except AWESOME!

I can't wait to hear about how it went!

Toymanswife wrote: Thank you everyone for the ideas. I'm down to about 36 hours so if anyone has another suggestion, I'd welcome them. This should be.....interesting!

Handouts....maybe they can color a picture or answer a question about something that's related to a topic you plan to talk about

Awaiting the download afterwards...

Toymanswife wrote: Thank you everyone for the ideas. I'm down to about 36 hours so if anyone has another suggestion, I'd welcome them. This should be.....interesting!

Have fun. Be honest.

Have fun with it. I have done presentations for kids for paleontology a few times. Hands on really helps get them into the subjects.

The first class is done. Other than a power point presentation that doesn't work because of the school computers, it's going pretty well. I'll post some pictures this evening.

Sweet! I hope you - and the kids - are having fun.

I took a Formula Hybrid car to an elementary school once for a science night. Not near as long as you're working with (ours was a walking-around kind of deal) but the kids LOVED the opportunity to put on gloves and a helmet and sit in the race car. They all wanted their parents to take their picture, etc.

Toyman01 wrote: The first class is done. Other than a power point presentation that doesn't work because of the school computers, it's going pretty well. I'll post some pictures this evening.

Excellent! Keep us updated and give a full run-down at the end. We're looking forward to hearing how it all went.

We finished up about 12:00. Over all I would say it was a roaring success. The kids had a blast. SWMBO did an outstanding job with her presentation. She had set up a power point presentation to show on the smart board in one of the classrooms. For the first group about 1/3 of the pictures and a video wouldn't play because the school computer system blocks anything that isn't on the approved list. One of the teachers knew how to fix that so the rest of them got to see the whole thing.

We got every kid in the car and took pictures of all of them. Those will be posted on a hosting site and the password will be given to the teachers to pass on to the kids parents. There are 280 pictures that Walmart will print for about $30. We are going to have them printed and take them to the school Monday to be passed out as well.

I think some of them were as fascinated by the enclosed trailer as they were the car.

We even managed to get the Principal in on the act. They are going to use a bunch of these pictures in their morning news program on Monday.

This is one of the teachers that set set some of this up.

All in all, it was a great day and I get the feeling we'll be back as well as possibly doing some of the other schools around the area.

Totally rad. Wish they would have brought a race car to my school.

I can't tell you how much I appreciated the suggestions everyone gave. They were invaluable. I couldn't have had such a great event without my hubby's help and we now have 113 more families that have been exposed to SCCA. I don't know that I want to do that again....whew I am tired.

I'm so glad to see that this went over so well! Fantastic work.

Thanks to both of you for sharing.

And THEN the 30 plus thank you notes arrived which made it even more worthwhile....from the students who let me know one of the kids knew more than "I" did about the current land/speed record....to the one who says he wishes his kitchen had the checkerboard floor like our car trailer did...Kids come up with the weirdest things.

Thanks again everyone!