I purchased these plastic pipes and connectors several years ago, for kids at church to build with. I’d found a few (with a smaller diameter) in our Resource Room. The kids enjoyed them, but there were so few of the pipes and connectors, that the children were frustrated by not being able to build more complex structures. I went to one of those big ol’ hardware/do-it-yourself stores. I chose a larger diametered size of pipe and the connectors that went with them. I discovered that the helpful employees would actually cut the very long pipes into more reasonable kid-friendly lengths.

Once, a boy was thinking and working and planning and putting pieces together, and, Ollie, Mollie, Gollie, he’d made a football goal post. He and two friends then went to work making another, identical structure, because everyone knows that you need TWO of those things.

And then, one morning, a few years later, somebody had a new and different idea. I think it was a couple of men who had volunteered to be in the room during the worship service hour. They created an over-sized version of a marble run.

You can see the wooden beads on the floor of the loft. We used to string them together to make a length of beads. That rarely happens these days, as it’s ‘way more fun to send them down a chute.

A few weeks in to this hilariously interesting activity, we determined that we needed to require the kids to create some sort of dam to prevent the beads from careening around the room and getting stepped on. Or, on some occasions, no beads could be found, and we had to move the larger pieces of furniture, like the block shelf and sink cabinet, to be able to locate the many, many beads that had rolled underneath them. That curved piece on the left is to re-direct beads under the loft, instead of zinging around the room.

But this one, on the right, is by far the best rampant-bead-rolling solution. It was the child’s idea. They made this a couple of feet longer than it shows in the photo. And, by time the beads rolled all the way down this corridor, they’d slowed down quite a bit and were easily retrieved.

And, these are some other bead-stopping solutions.

This was a very interesting addition to the original structure. However, it wasn’t really a reasonable addition to the original design. Balls that got dropped into the run just sat at the bottom, not really having enough momentum to travel to the end of the line. Or, not being to levitate up and over. But, that’s what trial and error are for. And, it certainly has value as a piece of preschool artistic design.

Recently, some interesting new parts showed up. I suspect Dads again. (Dads who knew where the rolls of colorful duct tape are stored.) And, I did have one Dad who looked at the thing and said it needed some stablility. He added some parts to make the whole structure more durable. You can see, in the right-hand photo, a gray band around one of the pipes. There are three of them, securely holding up some of the important parts.

I looked at all of this and thought, “How hard could it be, to get some more of those things and make other parts more secure.” I removed one of those gray things and took it to Home Depot. I went to the department where the white pipes are and showed them to an employee who was working in the area. He didn’t recognize it. Hmmmm.

Then, he went to ask around and came back and said, “I think it’s in the electrical department.” Bingo

It was that easy. And I was so excited to so easily find these that I didn’t look at the package and see that there it was a 5 Pack. And 5 was not enough. Which I figured out when I got to church and started putting them up.

I took some drill bits and some screws. At church, there actually are a couple of hand drills that we use when we’re talking about Bible people who were woodworkers, like Noah, and Joseph, and Jesus. But, the drill bits the kids use are really large. I took my own, smaller, drill bits. I drilled some holes, I screwed down some pipes. I pulled off lots of duct tape. And I cleaned lots of duct tape adhesive from the Plexiglass.

And I went back to Home Depot and got more of those Conduit Clamps.

This is what it looks like now. Maybe not as colorful, but somewhat more stable, I think.

I must admit that it’s lots easier to work willingly when I doing work for the kids.

And, an update from last week—

A photo from Thursday afternoon

At the carpool driveway–no cones!