Awana Grand Prix

Our kids are involved in a kids' program at our church called AWANA. It's really fun. The kids have a blast playing wild games, hearing Bible stories, and memorizing Bible verses. It's similar to scouting in that you earn badges and pins for doing different things, include community aid based projects. They also have fun stuff like Bible Quiz and the AWANA Games where kids from our AWANA club compete with kids from other church's clubs. All in all, it's a fun, faith-based, place for kids to be. I was involved with it as a kid but, our kids didn't get involved with it until last year. They totally love it! Now Dave and I are both AWANA leaders. He works with the 3rd-6th grade boys and I work with the kindergarten-2nd graders. It's so stinkin' FUN... even for grown ups!

Last month, we had the AWANA Grand Prix and it was such a blast! If you have kids involved with Boy Scouts then you already know about pine derby cars. Our family hadn't ever done anything like this before. We had so much fun! Our three oldest got car kits that included a block of wood and their wheels and axles. They set right to work designing their cars. They drew the shape that they wanted it to be on the block of wood and Dave used a saw and belt sander to help shape it for them. (No little people on gnarly power tools!)

Dave and boy RiceCakes working on a car!

The rest of the work, they did completely on their own... sand paper, painting, decals, etc.

Jack is a serious sander!

It's fun to see how their different personalities come out in their cars.

Matthew made a replica of Finn McMissile... his favorite car from Cars 2! He has a die cast car that he used as a model to make him. He even custom mixed paint colors to get it exactly the right shade of blue!

He did 90% of the work himself... including the Union Jack flags on the hoods!

Abi made a car that looks a lot like a jet... although she said she was just making a shape that she thought looked cool. It's gotta have tail fins to be a racecar in Abi's mind!

Abi is WAY proud of her vehicular masterpiece!

Jack and Joshua shared a car MOSTLY because Joshy has the attention span of a typical 5 year old! :) Jack was WAY into designing the car. He picked a shape that he thought would be really fast and worked on it for a long time. Joshua's ONLY stipulation was that it "be red."

Morning of the races... these two were stoked! Check out those racing stripes!

We had so much fun making cars! One thing we didn't realize was how competitive some people would be! There is a weight limit for the cars... they couldn't be over 5oz. There were people hot gluing pennies as weights to their cars. There were even a few people who'd used melted lead... SERIOUSLY... to get their car right up to the weight limit. We were not that serious, but man we sure had fun!

The track looks like this... A big hill and a straight away with 4 lanes!

If you've never done anything like this, give it a whirl! It's really worth it. I'm sure some people spent a fortune on their cars. We built 3 for a total of about $25. Not too shabby for a creative project for 4 kids and some great family time spent building them and then hanging out on race day!

Check out the staging area for all the cars!
These cars were all built by kids.
There was a whole other division for grown ups and teenagers!

We didn't have the fastest cars but, everyone came home with ribbons! And Matthew won a trophy... the Commander's Choice Award... for having built a really cool car primarily by himself!

Jack won a ribbon for the Straightest Axles!
Matthew wont a ribbon for the Best Disney Car along with his trophy!
Abi won a ribbon for the Best Military Vehicle!

We had such a great time! If you get a chance to do something like this with your kids... do it! It made such a fun memory and gave us time to work together on something that was purely for FUN!

Our kids can't wait to go to the AWANA Grand Prix next year!