My Mini - Golf Experiment Part III
Well I was looking at a few blogs I had written earlier and thought I should conclude this one.
I left off with finding the right surface to create friction for a golf ball to travel on cardboard. Balls of any kind do not travel well on cardboard alone. Painting it does not help. So after some running around a store, I found some big rolls of model train scenery. Basically green wood-chips glued on paper. Granted it was old as the rolls were in no way wanting to be unrolled and more of the chips and dust would come off of the paper, but once we glued the super contact glue on the cardboard and backside of the paper, we could glue both parts down just right. A little bit of ironing out the wrinkles with a piece of wood, and we were all set.
Now out of 18 holes, 2 of which did not need the green train set approach. One was Jill F’s Egypt. I told her that I wanted a sand-like hole, and instead of actually bringing in buckets of sand and ticking off Don the Janitor, I had went to the dollar store to pick up some sand paper squares. It worked great. The squares were small but putting two people on the project made it go faster.
The other hole was Antarctica. That was one of my responsibilities. So noticing that the green wood-chip paper does not paint well, I decided on some insulation panels. Preferably one that was cut so I could fit it in my car. The nearest place to get one was Koss Building Supply. They got me a nice sheet and it was 2 inches thick. Prefect for the ball to fall down into. They sliced it for me and and I glued some wood sticks on one of the ends and lined it up just right, dug some holes and I had a portable “snow island/continent”.
Now no matter what type of skill you have as a golfer or putter, chances are that the ball will fall off the cardboard. If you remember I had the whole school save toilet paper rolls so the class could cut them in half and glue them on the bottem of the cardboard/greens. By gluing a Styrofoam bowl where the hole goes underneath, makes a perfect cup. Of course with Antarctica, I just dug a hole out. But to make the ball stay of “course” we had to create some blockers or dividers. Insulation for pipes worked the best. A bag of 3 foot insulation tubes ran close to $12.
Some students created unique bumpers that did the same trick. Catherine T had picked China and her hole was essentially the Great wall of China with a dragon on it. The dragon was actually the green and the Great Wall was the cardboard. She had glued cardboard squares on it and then painted the whole thing gray/brown. Then she glued a dragon green on top. The leftover circles created by the holes everyone made were cut in half and created scales for the dragon which also kept the ball on the playing surface which was the dragon/green.
Emily C had Italy and she cut slices of pizza out of cardboard and glued them around her course. Danielle D did a similar thing except she had made mini loaves of bread out of paper and scrap paper for France. Brett K had England and glued Hotwheel cars as bumpers on his black topped streets of London. For the Styrofoam Antarctica, I saved my water bottles, took off the labels, and glued them on the surface. It made it look like ice on top of snow. Most of the other students used the piping I had purchased.
Now it was basically up to the kids and myself to decorate each of the holes as a country or region we were previously assigned.
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