I work at a nursery and I have a hard time managing the toys that the kids play with. I watch them put things in their mouths, cough and sneeze on the toys, and throw everything on the ground. Even though I see all of these things, it is hard to find the time to clean all of the toys, simply because there are too many and I do not have that much time. Any input would be appreciated! I taught twos, threes and fours for a few years. There isn't a lot you can do about the stuffed toys except put them in the laundry every so often, but here is what I did in my classroom in regard to the plastic stuff. Keep bleach locked away somewhere. At the end of the day put a capfull in a bucket of water and throw in the toys that were licked or sneezed on. Make sure you get in early enough to put the toys in a spot to dry and dump the bleach before your kids are in the classroom again. Don't worry too much about the stuff that falls on the floor. They are crawling, sitting and rolling around on the floor so those germs are all over them anyway.
If you have too many toys for a bleach bucket, toss them in sweater bags or bra sacks (you know, the laundry bags made of mesh?) and throw the whole lot in the dishwasher. Just set to a low heat setting (I rotated things and did a load like this every couple of weeks or so when I was teaching). Don't over-worry about it. On a lot of levels there is only so much you can do and the reality is they are getting exposure an awful lot anyway. Teach them about germs (there is a great activity with flour or glitter I'll explain in the paragraph below) and work handwashing into your routines frequently (especially right before snack and mealtimes). The exercise is that you have one child put flour or glitter all over his/her hands and then go around and shake hands with everyone in a circle (wash hands before the activity). Then have the child pick up some toys as well. Finally, have the kids inspect themselves and the toys. They'll find bits of glitter on most things. Explain that germs are like invisible little things that live everywhere.
Most germs are actually fine and won't do anything, but plenty of them can make us sick too. Go over how washing hands helps remove the germs so we don't spread them around. Then, go wash all the flour or glitter off to practice handwashing. Similar to @Balanced - I bought my kids a few kilos of lego off eBay, and when it arrived I was a bit concerned with cleanliness. Some of the bricks smelled, some were sticky, some had obviously been outside in a sandpit etc. So we filled a bath with water and some Milton (very mild bleach suitable for children's toys) and washed all the bricks. To rinse we used a shower attachment, picking up a sieve of bricks at a time and rinsing them, followed by placing them onto towels. Milton is mild enough that it shouldn't discolour plastics, and at the solution level we used (two caps full in a bath of water) the rinse was straightforward - we didn't feel there was a high risk of damaging levels of bleach left in any of the bricks nooks or crannies.
Browse other questions tagged toys daycare cleaning or ask your own question.Can't read the text above?Try another text or an audio CAPTCHAText in the box:What's this?This chart compares the quantity of parts in the following LEGO Mindstorms NXT Kits: If you prefer, omit the NXT Educational Set from the comparison or see which parts are in common between sets. Jump to a section: [ Angle Connectors ] [ Beams, Straight ] [ Unusual Parts ] This chart was prepared by Clinton Blackmore. Thanks go to Peeron for the set inventories and part information, and to the people behind the LDraw software and parts, and to the creators of L3P, Persistence of Vision Raytracer,We're sorry, but you have been blocked from this page. Why are you seeing this? You may be sharing an IP address with an application that is causing trouble. Or our system may have incorrectly blocked you (sorry, it can happen). What you can do Wait a while and try the page again.
Try loading this page from another computer or your smart phone. Try turning off browser add-ons and then reload the page.Let us know that you are getting blocked. We'll work to get you back into the loop asap. /blocked.html Thank you for understanding, and helping us to keep the internet safe.This page discusses some ideas related to gearing mechanisms that came out of my other projects (primarily the orreries) but are only remotely or tangentially related (no pun intended) to them. Axle and Cross-Block Mounting Hailfire Droid Wheel as Ring Gear Rotational Maths for Orrery Design In the early days of LEGO Technic, the one and only way to set up gear trains was like this: vertical and horizontal spacing Table of gear arrangements shown in the photos: vertical, horizontal spacing (in LPH, LSS) 8 36 44 LGDU = 21.96 mm 3 LPH + 2.5 LSS 12 14 26 LGDU = 12.98 mm 4 LPH 12 24 36 LGDU = 17.97 mm 5 LPH + 1 LSS 12 40 52 LGDU = 25.96 mm 3 LPH + 3 LSS
14 20 34 LGDU = 16.97 mm 5 LPH + 0.5 LSS 14 24 38 LGDU = 18.96 mm 3 LPH + 2 LSS 14 36 50 LGDU = 24.95 mm 1 LPH + 3 LSS 16 20 36 LGDU = 17.97 mm 5 LPH + 1 LSS 24 24 48 LGDU = 23.96 mm 7 LPH + 1 LSS 24 36 60 LGDU = 29.94 mm 7 LPH + 2.5 LSS The use of axles and cross-blocks (such as part 6536) allows for much more flexibility in how you position your gears. the same, with gears added The axles and cross-blocks and other little connectors allow for far more variety in how each hole is positioned. This is similar to the arrangement of Technic bricks and plates shown above, except that you can use arbitrary spacing along one axis (the vertical direction in This technique allows for the creation of a variety of gearing ratios in a standardized geartrain "module". For example, see my Stacked Turntable Module (method 3) Building Instructions The large wheel in the picture was only ever used in one set, 4481. It is a ring gear with 168
This is exactly three times the 56 teeth on the outside of the Technic Turntable (part 48452cx1), which means you can just fit three across inside the ring. I looked for another way to construct a concentric planetary gear mechanism, and here is the Dual Concentric Planetary Gear Arrangement using Hailfire Droid Wheel Video of the Hailfire mechanism The turntable in the center serves as the sun gear; the z36 and z40 gears are the planets (the planet carrier is hidden below the gears) and the Hailfire Droid wheel is the ring gear. All pairs that should be meshed are just right, except two: the red gear is just a little bit shy of the outer ring, and the two black ones (the inner one being the turntable) are not meshing with eachThe rest move really well and really smoothly. out of 5 is all it takes to keep the assembly centered and stable, the construction works as intended. The z36 and z40 gears are all held together by a symmetrical
arrangement of parts 6629 and Inside the turntable is a normal planetary gear setup — here the sun and planet are yellow and blue z8's, and the turntable serves as For a smaller (perhaps more practical) planetary gear solution there is the relatively newer in some of the "Power Miners" sets (8059, 8959, 8960, etc.) and a couple Ninjago sets like 2518 "Nuckal’s ATV". inward-facing teeth around the inside of a wheel with ribs and spikes Here is a way to construct a differential without a differential In a normal differential (shown on the left) the rotation of the housing (dark gray) is the average of the rotations of the two grayAs used in a vehicle, the drive goes into the housing, and the wheels are driven by the two axles. In the alternate differential (on the right) the two gray axles are connected (so they are the same axle), and the two pairs of dark grey gears move independently of the axle. The motion of the central axle
is the average of the rotations of the two pairs of dark gears. vehicle application, the drive power would go into the central axle, and each wheel would be driven by one of the dark gray gears. The little tiny teeth on the dark gray gears (not present on the differential housing) allowed me to make this somewhat whimsical orrery depicting a single planet with a moon, orbiting a triple star Orrery Based on the Inside-Out Differential Here is what it looked like after I added a stand: Forest Hills Robotics League, building tips (date unknown) Technic Bricks blog, Details about the new Mini Turntable, 2011 Oct 20 Technic Bricks blog, Planetary gear sets, 2009 Feb 14 The graph paper in my newer photos is ruled at a specing of 1 LSS, which is about 7.99 mm. This site is not affiliated with the LEGO® group of companies. LEGO®, Duplo®, QUATRO®, DACTA®, MINDSTORMS®, Constructopedia®, Robotics Invention System® and Lego Technic®,