Saving Humpty Dumpty

Last week Alex's class received a letter telling the students that Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and even the King's men couldn't figure out how to put the pieces of Humpty back together again. Each first grader was asked to build a container or contraption that would hold Humpty and keep him from breaking if he fell again.

Here is Alex (it was pajama day at school) holding the beginnings of his container for Humpty.

We did some research online before deciding what kind of container to make.  Most of the information we found stated that people who had made a container out of a tennis ball container or Prinkles container kept the egg from breaking.  We decided to try it. We kept two of the tennis balls in the container to add a little bit of weight to the bottom of the container.

It was a family project so we all helped. Logan held the container while Alex filled it with shaving cream.  It was a huge mess and the boys had a blast doing it!  LOL  Alex put as much shaving cream in the container as it would hold.  Then, he placed the egg (hard boiled) into the shaving cream padding and put on the lid.

Alex then held it over his head and dropped it--this was our first test.  The egg didn't crack so we tried it again with Alex standing on a chair.  It still didn't break.  We figured it was good to go so I asked Alex if he wanted to paint or decorate the container.

Jacob helping decorate the container.

Logan helped Alex paint the container--they had a lot of fun with this.

I didn't get a picture of the finished product, but it was ready for Alex to take to school on Friday.  He said they used a ladder and dropped the containers from the top of the ladder.  I asked how it went and he said, "Not good.  Mine broke."  I said, "I bet a lot of others broke too?"  He said, "Yeah, a lot of them broke.  It was fun, though."

We had a lot of fun making the container with Alex for his class. We didn't save Humpty Dumpty but Alex learned something and had a lot of fun in the process!