A Long Walk To Water

In my class, we read a book about a a girl who is not real but shows the perspective of a girl named Nya in Southern Sudan. This girl need to go to the pond all day, every day to get water for her family. Salva, a boy also in Southern Sudan, goes through war and has to escape and at the end, he makes a fountain and school for the people in “Nyas” village. Salva accomplishes a lot in his life.

    In a long walk to water, Salva has to learn the qualities of effective leadership. The qualities of effective leadership usually are to not give up on what you are going to do. Salva demonstrated this when he didn’t give up on helping Sudan. He dug through the ground of Nyas village and found water they can drink. He also demonstrated this when he led a group of boys and made speeches every day on how there plan was going.

    Salvas philosophy “bit by bit, one step at a time” may help me one day because I may want to try something different and I start getting frustrated, I can listen to Salvas philosophy and start accomplishing something, bit by bit. Perseverance is important because if you never try, you will never accomplish anything. If you persevere, you can accomplish things. You can develop the ability to persevere when you just do what you think you can’t do. When you have a fear, you should do what that fear is and you will not be afraid of that thing anymore. That is how perseverance is important and you need to get over your fears.

Rube Goldberg; what we needed to know

When I was doing my Rube Goldberg project, I learned a lot of things. One thing is that not every plan is going work. We went through so many plans to chose our last one was the right one and it still wasn’t the one. We haven’t thought about what the right idea is going to be but we will decide soon. The ideas we went through to start the Rube Goldberg were my baby sister, a robot BB8, and a remote controlled car. We decided to just use a car that springs forward when you pull it back. The next thing we needed to think of was the ramp. We had a lot of thoughts of what the ramp is going to do and how it’s going to face. We ended up putting the ramp facing the rest of the Rube Goldberg chain. The most important things we had to think about the springboard and pulley. We decided not to make a springboard because it was just not working don’t know if we are going to use a pulley or not. That is my Rube Goldberg project and what I learned.

Rube Goldberg; fails

Let me get this straight with you, WE MESSED UP OUR WHOLE RUBE GOLDBERG!!! Rehma and I were working and we were making our pulley but then stuff happened. One; the things on the pulley were way to heavy and the pulley was not strong enough to hold those things. Two; when we put the pulley on the roof we realized that the stuff the pulley was holding were way too heavy so we took the pulley off the roof. It basically ruined the roof and we had to think of another way to do it. We may even have to rethink our whole plan but we don’t know yet.

    We also messed up on one of the other most important part of our Rube Goldberg. The springboard is what started the chain reaction where the ball on top of the springboard bounced off the springboard and hit a block of wood with a cup on top of it which fell and it pulled weights off the pulley and etc. But we realized the springboard won’t work. We were making our own springboard with extra springs around the house and cardboard. But the spring wasn’t communicating with the cardboard. It either didn’t stick on or the springboard won’t actually spring like a springboard is supposed to so we changed our. The plan will be stated in one of my other Rube Goldberg blogs. And those were the most of the fails we had on our Rube Goldberg.

Rube Goldberg; new plans

For our Rube Goldberg project, we have had many fails. We had the pulley fail and the springboard fail but we made other plans to replace those fails. The thing we did to replace the springboard idea is we decided we would let the car hit the ball immediately. The plan we had before was that we pull back a car that springs forward when you pull it back and that car hits a wedge that was wedged in front of another car. That car would move forward which will pull weights off of the springboard and that makes the ball on top of the springboard bounce up and hit a block of wood and etc. But now since we had no springboard, we changed the plan up. First, just like our first plan, we pull a car backwards and that springs forward which makes that car hit a piece of string. The string is held down by a piece of tape but when the car hits it, the other car that is attached with the string flings forward. That car hits a soccer ball and the soccer ball hits a wood block and we don’t know what to do after that because the pulley was going to be the second to last step and we can’t use it. That’s our Rube Goldberg project so far.

Rube Goldberg Materials

For my Rube Goldberg project, the materials my group needed were kind of weird but they worked out pretty well. The materials were pulley wheels, string/yarn, tape, glue, spring, cardboard, a ramp (we used cardboard and a baby drawing table and folded it over to make it a ramp), a car that springs forward when you pull it back, a door wedge, another toy car (this time it does nothing), dowel, weights (a lot of them), plastic or paper cups, a kind of flattened wood plank, a long wood plank that can stand up on its own, books, a ball, and a laptop! Those were the materials for my Rube Goldberg project.

Rube Goldberg Ideas

The way we got an idea for our Rube Goldberg machine is we first thought of what we want to be the simple task. We chose opening a laptop. The way we actually thought of the chain reaction is we thought of the the simple task, opening a laptop, and started it with something that is able to open a laptop, like a wood plank. Then we worked backwards and got to our last step, which is that we pull back a car that springs forward when you pull it back so that it hits something and on. The sketching and the thinking part was a very complicated part. It took so long to find a way to start the chain reaction. The ideas we had were a BB8 robot, my baby sister, Melisa, and a remote controlled car. None of these we knew will work so we just decided to use the car we are using now. And that’s how we are going to do our Rube Goldberg project. That’s my groups Rube Goldberg project.

Rube Goldberg Plan

We started doing a Rube Goldberg project. A Rube Goldberg project is a complex set of chain reacting objects that use energy or force. The set of chain reacting objects completes a simple task. Me and my partner’s task is to open a laptop. The way we started it is that we are going to pull backwards a car that springs forward when you pull it back and the car starts moving down the ramp. The car hits another car which is attached to weights which pulls the weights off of a springboard. That makes the ball lying on the springboard bounce up and hit a piece of wood with a cup on top of it. Since the cup is on top of the wood, it knocks over. The cup has weights inside and is attached to the weights on the pulley so it pulls the weights on the pulley down. The weights were the same weight as the books also attached to the pulley so now that it is off, the books fall down to the ground. Instead of the ground though, the books will fall on a wood plank which was wedged in the laptop. The books hit the wood plank which makes the side that the plank was wedged in go up. Now that it is up, the laptop is open! That was my groups Rube Goldberg project.

 

My Tiny Room Thing

  Before you say anything, I am not complaining about my small room. I actually made a small room thing out of cardboard. So how are they this is that my dad got this tiny speaker so I took the box and I cut off one side to make it like look at the room from a person’s point of view. What is inside is basically just a lot of those thin cardboard tags and I cut up to make the bed,chair, and desk. I made the bed with the tags and used paper for the blanket and pillow. What I used to make the bean bag is I used a little squishy ball, cut it in half, and coated it with white-out. The problem with this is that the white-out cracked a lot but I didn’t really get bothered with that. I made the laundry basket with an old glue cap and covered it with white-out and tissue paper. Then I made the desk with layers of tags and covered it with tissue paper. On the desk I made a laptop, some papers, and a desk lamp. The papers were made out of paper, the laptop was made out of tags, and the desk lamp was made out of extra plastic from a toy syringe and glow stick connectors. The chair is made out of tags and the syringe. The last thing I added was some picture frames. The chandelier I’m still working on but that is how I made my tiny room thing.

Stop Motion

     We started to do stop motion projects. Stop motion is a lot (and I mean a lot) of pictures combined to create a video or movie. In a real stop motion video, each second would be 24 frames. But since we are just starting we are doing 12 frames in a second. We are using lego people as the things that move around.

In my group we had a cookie man as one of our legos and knew what we were going to do. In the beginning, the cookie man would have its body parts come together and then it just starts to walk toward the camera. But suddenly, two bad people come and pin him down. But then Captain America comes in and tries to save him. That’s where we found a problem. The problem was how are we going to make Captain America fly? So we went and got a lot of pants. That way I can hold Captain America while he flies. We attached the pants and it looked really weird but we went with it.

The second stop motion movie we made is about a circle of pants trying to kill the cookie man. But Captain America was there to save the day. This time we didn’t have any pants in hand (because we used them for the circle of pants) we used string instead. This looked a little bit better. Anyway Captain America used his shield to make the circle of pants explode and drift away. He flies off and the cookie man walks away. That was the second stop motion we made.

The last stop motion movie we made is about two boys who walk to each other and do there secret handshake when the cookie man comes and the boys run away. The cookie man becomes sad and sits down and finds a helmet next to him. He puts it on to cover his face when the boys come and walk toward the cookie man. The cookie man takes the helmet off to show its him and the boys run away again. Then a huge, disgusting snake man comes and attacks the cookie man. The boys thought they needed to help him so they did but another person cane to help. CAPTAIN AMERICA!!! They all fight and the snake man goes away. The rest do a dog pile and then, looking at the camera, you see snake man!! Ahhhhhhh!!! That was the last movie we made.

The way we are editing our movies is that we are using iMovie. And that’s how we are doing stop motion.

  

Constitutional Project

We are doing a Constitutional project. It is a project where we took two dice and rolled them. One die showed what topic about the Constitution. The topics were documents, people, places, art, technology, or events. The second die showed what type of project you will be showing about the topic you got. The choices were explain everything, wevideo, social media, design something, padlet, or photo novel. The ones I got were explain everything and art. The art piece I am researching about is “Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States by Howard Chandler Christy (1940)”. 40 of the 56 delegates are in the painting. George Washington is on a step stool mixed with a stage type of thing and right in front of the stage Benjamin Franklin with Alexander Hamilton lean toward him. Behind and next to them there are more delegates.

    Explain Everything is an app that is like seesaw but has a better variety of functions so the slides would be more detailed and better described. We do this on the Ipads. We get a time everyday to work on this project. We do research and find websites that will give us information about the painting and artist. And that is what the Constitutional Project is all about.

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