I thought this TFK article, Star Ballerina was very inspiring. It was interesting how Misty Copeland was the first African-American woman to be promoted to principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. She started at the age 13 which is late for a ballet dancer but she still persevered. Misty said, “You can create your own path. You can be who you are. You don’t have to look like the person next to you. I think that’s important for kids to understand.” That is a really inspiring quote.
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The Power of Quiet Reflection
I think this article in the TFK was really interesting. It rose awareness to me about kids who are quiet can really make a big splash in the world. I used to think that only out-going people could be successful. I learned so much, I actually thought that this article was one of the best that I have read.
GRACE LIN visit
Grace Lin visited today, 5/17. I was surprised she visited the fifth graders of Heathcote School on her birthday! I guarantee you that I would definitely not visit fifth graders on my special day, but I guess some people think differently about to certain situations. I was a little sad that I couldn’t ask my very interesting question, “If that girl in line said sure, do you think you would be as successful as you were now?” See, a great question. Grace Lin is not just any author, she is a great role model, too. Our class made a Padlet about her TedTalk.
To see a link to the TedTalk, click here
To see our Padlet, click here
2016 Summer Olympics Reflection
This year’s Summer Olympics is going to take place in Rio de Janeiro. About 11,000 athletes will participate in the games. The Olympics will run from August 5 to 21. Some new sports introduced to the Olympics for either the first time or a comeback sport is, rugby, gulf, and team refugee sports.
Anytime you get to represent your country is amazing, to represent your country at the largest sporting event in the world is a whole other story,” U.S. swimmer Reece Whitley
SI Kids Current Event
Raptors exorcise playoff demons in Game 7 win over Pacers
The Toronto Raptors, finally got 7 game series win. 2 years before, they lost a heart-breaking game seven to the Brooklyn Nets at home. A year later, they got swept 4-0 vs. the Washington Wizards. If they lost, it would’ve been another failure of a season for Canada’s only NBA team.
“A nation exhales,”
When the clock struck 00.00, Raptor’s fans took a sigh of relief after a 89-84 win. They can celebrate now, but their next matchup will be against the Miami Heat.
Poetry Anthology
I completed my poetry anthology 4/20. My anthology has a total of 5 poems. I don’t like how Ms. Edwards made us do it that way. I would write poems, then print them out, then color them, then make a cool cover. But we had to make a Screencastify, put a poem on a Google Drawing and put a picture behind it, free choice, and poetry festival poem. I can’t use some of my favorite poems because I can’t find a different way to display them. I guess go with it, though
Here is a link to my Poetry Anthology
Rube Goldberg 4/18
Max and I finished!!! Not that it was easy-peasy. No, it was really DIFFICULT. First, we had a deadline. 3:30 to 5:15. Many tries, came with an equal amount of FAILS. We totally changed EVERYTHING, for the third time. The part at home that I did was a complete BUST. It didn’t WORK OUT on Maxwell’s “workout” bench.(Get it?) To top it off, Maxwell’s mom forgot to tell the “cleaning ladies” to not DESTROY Maxwell’s part. So we spent most of the time trying to remember what we did. When my dad came, it was a CATASTROPHE. We had to re-setup so many times. When the time came, I left for about 45 minutes until Max’s drum lesson was over. Our next deadline was until my dad had to pick up my sister at 5:45. We fixed everything but guess what? More and more F-A-I-L-S. They just kept piling on! My dad had to leave and when he came back we would continue. I counted six more fails when something, AMAZING happened…Everything thing worked! Except for the last part! The next try we actually accomplished our goal! In our not-so-realistic fantasies. Okay, we did eventually get it right and everybody cheered and clapped. Except for one thing…Nah, I’m just playing with you.
It was really fun collaborating with my buddy Maxwell on this project. But we did go through some up-and-down moments. We realized, when you have a great partner by your side, you can accomplish anything.
Rube Goldberg 4/17
I finished my half of the project! To start it off, I got my HotWheels track from the basement. Some features of the track are: The track goes in a loopdy-loop , it starts off by someone launching the car, and it ends on an inclined plane. After the car goes off an inclined plane, it hits a ball that goes down a ramp made of wooden blocks. Around the ramp is a house for design so it doesn’t look like Max and I just put together a bunch of things in 30 minutes. After the ball goes down the ramp, it goes into a clear tube. The ball then starts Maxwell’s part. We’re still trying to figure out the final, simple, task. On Monday, we will finish everything, clear up some things and video our A.R.G.M(Awesome Rube Goldberg Machine)
LATER IN THE DAY UPDATE
Huge stuff. I realized that my part of Max an my A.R.G.M wasn’t really a “chain reaction” and the percentage of it working was less than my age. So I tried using the idea of our original plan. The cart would go down the workout bench, but I changed it a little. For starters, I would press a button to launch a rubber pig that would hit a cart with a ball in it. The cart would have to come to an abrupt stop, forcing it to flip, letting the ball go through an open tunnel (two of the sides were blocked, you could see from above and North to South.) The ball would then go through a clear tube which would then lead to Maxwell’s side. Also, I figured out the simple task and how to actually accomplish it. There would be a domino tower that would fall because of the impact of something else knocking into it which would land on a “dinger” to wake up Maxwell to finish his homework after dozing off momentarily.
Rube Goldberg 4/4
I met up with Max at 4:30. We were planning to video our project today. He changed a lot of things since last time. But, we immediately ran into some problems. Our original simple task was slide a piece of paper under the door but we couldn’t find a way, then we wanted knock a globe off its axis, that did not work, finally we decided to have a domino fall on Max’s foot while he’s “sleeping” to wake him up after he got bored of his homework. Also, it was extremely hard to make it work. We had all these intricate things that have at most a 25% of working and even if it did work, it would be hard to film it. So we spent about an hour brainstorming again. My dad came just as we were about to try it out. He filmed it and it only got past step two. After ten videos, we couldn’t get past step 3. We tried different ways with my dad’s help but it still wouldn’t work. So we decided that Max’ll fix the second half of the project while I do the first half because our idea did not work. To me, we basically took a step back in the process. Hopefully, we’ll get it done before the deadline, April 19.
Rube Goldberg 4/1
I went to Max’s house at 5:45. I brought a mini cart, dominoes, sticks, special blocks, a golf tube, and tennis balls. We got right to work. I used my iPod to record and take pictures of our work. We started off with an inclined plane for the cart to go down, which would hit the golf tube which hit a paper cup tower which would hit dominoes in a line which would hit a card tower which would hit a domino which would start a marble going down a ramp hitting down dominoes one by one almost like curtains were opening which would curve then knock into a domino line which would hit a ball which would hit a bigger ball which would hit a book which would hit a bigger book and would turn on a switch to turn on a fan which would blow a message under the door saying “Come See Our Awesome Rube Goldberg Project”.
Italics/bold words mean that Max and I haven’t put that step together yet.
Here’s the link to our Rube Goldberg folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0B1kJrBhG_rOIV09yS2pxY0NnWXc