Lego Zip Wire

Lots of creativity required to design and build the fastest Lego structures to go down a zip wire.

Lego zip wire competitors at the ready.

What you need:
- selection of Lego figures and blocks / pieces

- rope or string

- a high and low point to attach the string to (I taped the high end to our counter top and tied the low end around the leg of a chair)

How it works:

I set up the zip wire first so that my son could get an understanding of what a zip wire is. Make sure that the string is pulled nice and tight. I explained that we needed to build some structures to help the Lego figures slide down the zip wire as fast as possible. As my son is relatively young this stage required quite a lot of support. Remember when building the structures that there needs to be some way of hooking it onto the string. See picture above for structure examples.

Once the structures were built I showed my son how to hook each one onto the string and then let him have free reign over which ones he played with. He enjoyed seeing which ones were the fastest and he also had fun setting two off together as it looked like one was chasing the other.

Attaching the Lego structure to the string.

Testing out the fastest Lego structure.

A way of extending this activity for older children could be to time the structures going down the zip wire and to write up a leader's board of scores.