Hi friends,

Building my Rube Goldberg machine was the most stressful time I have ever experienced. I waited until last minute, which was a mistake, because I thought it would be an easy and a fun task.  I was wrong!

First, I had to come up with the steps. This is where my mind first went BLANK.  So I thought, what if I collect items around the house that could be used in a Rube Goldberg Machine, like spheres or anything that could be made into a ramp. I was happy I found my grandparent’s dominoes and some wood planks that I had left over from a project that I did a while back.

I still couldn’t think of any steps so I thought, let’s just lay down some dominoes and it should spark some ideas.

I was right! After the first step, the rest just followed much easier. I tried each step separately and didn’t continue until it worked that way I didn’t have to build the whole thing and then find out at the end that it didn’t work.

Even though this was a very stressful project, I had fun doing it.

Legos seem like the perfect tools for building architecture models, right? They are fun to play with and can be used in creating miniature models of almost anything you can think off. However, they aren’t really used as much by architects to create models of their designs for presentations before the building starts. That’s because, even though they come in different shapes and sizes, they isn’t still enough variety for architects to use in building models. Modern architecture comes in all shapes and sizes and legos just aren’t flexible enough to be useful.  However, they are a lot of fun for kids, like me, who love architecture and can build models of existing buildings. Hopefully, in the future, lego will come out with other pieces that will allow architects to be creative.

Hello,

In this blog post I will write about my experience when interviewing an immigrant. The person I chose to interview was my father. I could have picked really anyone in my family since they are all immigrants who came to the United States as war refugees from Kosovo. Interviewing him was easy, since I have asked him some of the questions before. However, after our lesson on immigration and push and pull factors, I have learned which questions to ask in order to get the most information. It was very emotional to interview my father. Even though he told me stories many times, this time, it felt like he was just a number to be entered in one of the waves for future students to learn about. I admire the courage that he had to start a whole new life in a whole new country and leave behind his family and his home. He had to escape the war and this was the only way to survive. When learning about push and pull factors from the past waves, I’ve come to hate push factors. Pull factors are OK, better education, better work. Push factors are usually very terrible and push people out of their homes. I can’t believe that even in modern times, we still have war as a push factor. I enjoyed this interview and it made me realize that each immigrant has a story and they are not just a number.

The project went well. I loved the process, it was really fun. I learned a lot about the 19th Amendment and about women’s rights. I learned about their determination and struggles for almost a century. I learned about many strong and courageous women, Elisabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony, among them.  It took me a while to find sources that contained what I needed. I decided to go with education or government websites since I thought would be trustworthy. Organizing the timeline of events that led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment was an exciting part of the project. I felt like a historian.

My favorite part was the making of the video. Doing the voice over was like solving a puzzle, it was challenging yet a lot of historic fun. It was challenging to fit the voice over in the 15 sec time limit and it took a while but it was exciting to finalize and watch it.

During this quarantine it’s very important that we make sure that we are safe.  Me and my sister are lucky to have this lot next door where we get exercise either early morning or evening.  There are people there during the day so we don’t go.
We also take Tai Chi online every other day.  We also created an exercise routine with my sister inspired by Tiktok that we do twice a day, everyday.  I will be posting a video of that as soon as my sister agrees to be filmed and if she decides to come down from her apartment-I mean room lol

NO!

It is cruel to keep anyone in captivity.  “Animals are very intelligent and social.” .  Even though zoos try to take good care, the animals are often unhappy.  Zoos can not manage to hold them in groups so they are usually “in pairs or alone.” They need to hunt their own food so they can feel like they are taking care of themselves and their families.  

They need to be in their natural habitat.  Keeping them in captivity means they can not roam or run around the way they would in the wild.  “Polar bears might walk or swim up to a hundred miles a day.” Zoos can only manage to create a space for them that is no bigger than a school gym.  

About 28% of Americans believe that we need zoos to educate us.  I bet they never met a dinosaur, but they know a whole lot about them.  We don’t need to personally meet animals to learn about them. Dinosaurs are extinct and we still know more about them than some living animals.  Fossils help us learn. We wait for the animal to die in the wild and then we study it. If anyone is super interested in learning about animals, they can study zoology.  They can take trips and visit them in their natural habitat (without hurting or disturbing them of course.) My grandfather is a biologist. He watches the National Geographics for about 90% of his day, and the other !0% is the Discovery Channel.  I see people recording and photographing animals from the distance with long lenses, they can zoom in and get up close shots of them. This can help them study their behaviour or how they hunt or how they take care of their families.  

About 25% of Americans believe that zoos exist “to rescue animals in need of care.”  Another 26% of Americans think that we need zoos “to protect species from going extinct.”  That’s a lot of Americans! Raising awareness is very important in how people form their opinions.  If those 51% of Americans knew that Animal Sanctuaries do just that minus the kidnaping, breeding, buying or selling of the animals.  Animal Sanctuaries release the animals back into the wild after they are well enough to take care of themselves They cure them from illnesses or accidents.  They take animals that have been neglected or hurt by people and help them heal.  

The wild can be a dangerous place for animals.  Humans, the most dangerous animals of all, hunt them for their fur, teeth and who knows what else.  Instead of building zoos, we have to raise awareness about this problem and make restrictions and make these hunters pay big fines or jail time if they are caught hunting.  I guess there are a lot of laws for that but people aren’t getting caught or are not getting enough of a fine to make them stop. Hello 51% of Americans, do you want to help animals and avoid letting them go extinct? Maybe help stop the burning of Amazon or the cutting down of trees that leaves animals without a home.  Do you want to help animals? Stop buying crocodile shoes? Do you want to stop animals? Stop eating them!

I keep wondering about what the 8% who chose “other” said.  I wonder if they said that hanging out with animals at the zoo helps kids care more about them and love them.  Actually, it only teaches them that when they grow up, they too can cage an animal. Ask any kid about all the species of birds, most that they have seen at zoos or parks, and see how many they know.  Now ask a child about the species of dinosaurs and see if they miss any. Kids love dinosaurs, even though they never meet one at the zoo.  

Norik