We built our catapult today. At first, my group thought that we should have something similar to a see-saw. We were thinking about having a shoe hit our see-saw/catapult. There was a lot of flaws in that plan. So, we scrounged the internet for a simple catapult. We found one that was made out of two soda cans, rubber bands, and a fork. Click here to watch the video…. We decided to build it. Audrey, Julia, and I had watched the video a million times, so we got right to work. Not the best idea. We emptied the coke cans we were using. As we were building, Audrey suddenly said that we weren’t supposed to empty the cans. We were reluctant to believe her, mostly because we didn’t want to start over, but unfortunately, Audrey was right. We got more cans, and then another problem surfaced. We couldn’t find any rubber bands! We scrounged my house and found a few. We were very proud how well our catapult worked.

Rescuers found “help” spelled out in palm fronds on a deserted island. Three men had spelled it out in hope to be rescued after three days of being stranded. Their boat had been destroyed by a wave.

I find it unnerving, that if these three men hadn’t been wearing life jackets on, they probably wouldn’t be here to this day. They swam form their sinking ship to a deserted island. These two of these three men were waving their life jackets around next to the place they spelled out “help”. What struck me as odd is that it stated in the article, “Fortunately for them, they were all wearing life jackets and were able to swim to the deserted island.” It was almost stating that most people don’t wear life jackets on a boat, and these men were just lucky that they happened to be wearing them.

We had to do four poems for our poetry anthology. My four where called, I Snap a Picture, Kamp Kohut, My Best Friend is my Dog, and Space. The first one, I Snap a Picture is about spring. I made the poem rhyme because I like how poems flow when you do. I was inspired to write this poem because I love to write about seasons. Click here to see my screen cast. My next poem is called Kamp Kohut. I made a google drawing for this poem. I was inspired for this poem because Kamp is my favorite place in the world. Play close attention to the rhymes!

My next poem is My Best Friend is my Dog. I wanted this poem to be funny. I put a couple of rhymes in. I decided to make a video of me acting out this poem with my dog. Click here to see the video. My last poem was the one I did for our poetry festival. It was actually two different poems combined. In this poem, I wrote about the wonder of space and “aliens”. Click here to see the poem.

I hope you enjoyed!!!

Our deadline was in 5 days! We didn’t know what to do! Our catapult and zip line ideas were really risky!!! And we tried to order our popper, but it wouldn’t come in time! We decided that we needed a backup plan. After putting our heads together and discussing, we came to a conclusion. We would make a video of us saying thank you for watching our Rube Goldberg. When we got together on Saturday, we took a look at what we had so far, and decided that it was to complicated. Our group worked backwards and decided to have the truck press play on my computer. We tried many different tactics (like having the truck already on the space bar and have a domino push it off), but nothing worked two times in a row! We decided to move on the next thing and get back to it.

For our Rube Goldberg, we will start by launching a catapult, which hits a book on a zip line, which hits a car that rolls down a ramp, that hits a wheel. The wheel goes down a small , which hits a marble that goes down a paper towel tube. The marble hits a ball of string. The string unrolls, and hits a row of dominoes. The dominoes hit a Hello Kitty action figure which hits a confetti popper.