October 26

Home of the Brave

Our teacher is reading a book called Home of the Brave. We ask questions to help each other think about the book better. Here is one of the questions: Gol is a cow, but Katherine Applegate (author of Home of The Brave) also uses her as a symbol. How does Gol represent Kek’s past, present, and possibly his future?

Gol represents Kek’s past because most of Kek’s family members died. When Kek sees Gol he remembers his family because gol means family and also it reminds him of Africa and that’s where Kek came from. Gol symbolizes love for Kek. Kek loves his family. Gol being there is like Kek’s family being there. When he was taking care of gol, Kek felt like gol was apart of his family. I think gol might represent Kek’s future because maybe Kek will go back and take care of gol and than gol will be a real part of his family and he will be by Kek’s side. Kek is trying to get Gol to go to the petting zoo and to have a nice new place to stay and Kek is trying to get a new life back. Somehow Kek and Gol are alike.

October 12

Go Rocketry!

Our class has been working on rocketry. My group is Mia, Om, Alex and me. Our group name is Science Minds. We all have to work together to make a rocket that shoots up really high. You might be wondering how can we calculate how high the rocket goes? Well we do that by using a clinometer and a trundle wheel. They are used to  calculate something in the air and where to calculate it. The first step we did was make an inspiration board to inspire unique ideas for our rockets.  My group is different. We all have ideas that can go together to make an amazing rocket. Or first though is what colors are we going to make our rocket and what materials are we going to use? We knew that markers wouldn’t work so well so we decided to use duck tape. The colors we used were purple, yellow, black, blue and green. We all though that blue and green were “science colors” so that’s why we used those colors. For the fins, Om had an idea to cut wood and bring it in. For the nose cone we are 3D printing.

It was time to design what our rocket would look like. We grabbed a piece of paper and started to sketch the rocket we wanted to build. We all had amazing ideas. We had to measure where everything was going to go so we would know where to put the fins when it was time to build.

Preparing was our next step. We had to gather up all of the materials we wanted. Duck tape, rulers, scissors, wood, bottle, and our nose cone. Then organize where we are going to put it on the rocket. It got a little crazy with everyone getting materials and organizing but we could handle it.

Building was one of the hardest parts of this project. If we messed up we would have to do everything over again unless you could fix the problem. Duck taping was really hard. We had to cut the right amount and place it in the right place without it sticking to anything. Before we glue the fins to the rocket we needed to sand that bottle first. Next was hot gluing the fins to the bottle. Then we are going to 3D print the nose cone and then hot glue it to the top of the bottle so it is pointing upwards.

We did our first launch! It was so awesome! I was a little bit of both. Nervous and totally excited. Our rockets went so high. My groups rocket went the second highest out of the other groups in our class. I was still proud of my group. We are still not done with our rockets yet. We have a second launch to do and we have to fix up our rockets. My group is going to change our wings, nose cone, and the color of our rocket. The wings are going to be changed to our school colors which are yellow and black. The nose cone is going to be smaller to fit better and the color of it will be red. We also will make the nose cone transparent. The rocket will be covered in white duck tape. We are cutting out some pink hearts and details and putting them on the fin. I can’t wait to do the second launch and see who’s rocket goes the highest!

 

This picture is of my group and I. Mia is the one that is holding the rocket my group and I made.

This picture is what my groups inspiration board looks like. The post-its are for saying why we used the pictures we used and how they are helpful to us.

This is a video of Om launching our rocket in slow motion.

I made a photo collage and it has some photos of my class doing rocketry.

We also are doing an Isaac Newton Biography Infographic. An infograghic is something were you have information and pictures and them put them together. Then you make an infograghic. You might be wondering, “who is Isaac Newton?” Well he is a smart guy that discovered gravity and the 3 laws of motion. Isaac Newton is a big part of rocketry. Without motion, we wouldn’t be able to launch rockets. On the computer, we prototype an idea of what our infograghic will look like and we do the same on paper. Then when we think our infograghics are done, we print it out. That is the process on how we make our infograghics.