Shop Vac

Anyone who has had the pleasure of cleaning up a job site with a shop vac has felt that thrill, the rush of power that comes with vac-ing up seemingly anything in sight, no matter how improbable.  Wow, those nails! No way, that pile of sawdust and rubble!  Caught up in the swirling moment, reality can begin to blur.  I ... just ... vacuumed.... a pony!

In hopes of passing on that excitement to my young children, I conceived today's activity.  First, the kids and I would make a huge mess by ripping up old magazines and some Scientology pamphlets, throwing them everyhwere.  Then, armed with the shop vac, the kids would  gobble everything up.  Vacs plural, as it turned out, because I got all greedy and borrowed my neighbor's, too. 

The activity started swimmingly, the kids ripping paper pieces, which made a satisfying "thwack" as they shot into the hose.

Sam took to the vacuuming immediately while Jane tore up magazines, but Iris started crying from all the noise.    Then, strangely enough, the paper pieces occasionally started to jam in the corrugated tube of the vacuum (what the?).  This was kind of disappointing until it led to a major discovery, on the order of finding penicillin in orange mould.  Turns out when you switch the vac hose from suck to blow (and no, Dad, that's not what She Said) it turns the jammed hose into an awesome confetti cannon!  Readers, I will be certain to design a future Tuesday activity around precisely this feature!

So, Sam loved it and Jane was soon manning the second vac.   Iris eventually got over her fear and settled into the role of paper ripper/thrower.  Jane figured out that if she stuck the hose on Sam, it would suck hard enough to stick.  This move was disallowed.  We tore and threw and vac-ed until we tripped a breaker, then reset the breaker and kept playing until we tripped it again.

Fun Rating: 8  Shop Vac was a super awesome activity, but paper size had to be smaller than I anticipated to avoid hose jams and we kept blowing the breaker.  Vac-as-cannon discovery was a silver lining.
Waffles