By Keighla Schmidt, Staff Writer

During their free time at Glendale Elementary School’s Kid’s Company program, third-graders Alex Zheng and Simen Restad, of Savage, combined their physical and mental energies to generate a large windmill.

“Those two were so proud of it,” said Kid’s Company Site Leader Natalie Krinhop. “They just love to build and make things.”

The two boys have independently and collaboratively built other K’nex projects before, but never one of this scale or motion, they said.

The windmill was constructed out of thin, color coded plastic pieces called K’nex, which are like a crossbreed off Lincoln Logs and Legos.

“K’nex are really fun because you can build with them and they can bend.  Legos I like because they can go on top of each other and make doors, but K’nex are just better,” Simen said.

Alex, on the other hand, is strictly partial to K’nex.

“Legos I don’t really like any more because there just aren’t enough of them to make really big things like we can with K’nex,” he said.K'nex windmill: Simen Restad and Alex Zheng used
Knex to build a large windmill at an after-school care
program at Glendale Elementary School.

The windmill the two made was modeled after one they saw in a K’nex tablet. There were no instructions or piece-by-piece breakdowns as there are when grown-ups put bookcases or shelves together. The boys followed a simple color photo on a laminated sheet of paper. From there, the two let their engineering imaginations take the reigns.

“We looked at how they had the colors separated on the different parts,” Simen said.

The most challenging part, he said, was “going through the bottom because there were so many small little pieces,” he said.  

Alex said the easiest part was the most recognizable part – the “wings.”

The yellow sails had a wing span taller than either boy could reach on their tip toes and couldn’t even fit in a storage closet in one piece.

To make it a spinning windmill, the two had to get creative and come up with a way to make the K’nex move. Simen had made a lever but that initially restricted the sails to one rotation, which was not OK with the engineers.

“They worked hard on it, no one was able to help them; no one else really even knows how to work with (K’nex) like they do,” Krinhop said.

Eventually, they fashioned a joint and made the windmill wings spin.

The windmill was impressive enough to get grandparents, parents and even the boys’ schoolmates to take a trip down to see the impressive energy alternative.

“Everyone was pretty impressed that we built it by ourselves,” Simen said of their three-day collaboration.

Even though the fruits of their labor had to come down, it was for a good reason -- the two were already planning their next masterpiece.

They’ve already checked off a hot air balloon and a stationary suspended rollercoaster. Next, they plan to tackle a rollercoaster with a car that will move on tracks.

The two plan to start that feat when they come back from winter break.

Keighla Schmidt can be reached at kschmidt@swpub.com