June 13

Capstone – Blog Post #3

In the past month or two 5th graders have been working on Capstone daily. Capstone is the biggest project we have ever had to do. We each picked our own topics that we were interested in. I chose interior design because I want to be an interior designer when I grow up. We also had to have a main inquiry question. My main inquiry question was “How have design styles for bedrooms changed over the last 100 years”


The process of researching was challenging. At first, I couldn’t find any resources and was having trouble taking notes. But towards the end, it was exciting. I started to see some really good information that helped me a lot with my project. I ended up having more than enough information. Something that I learned during my research was that there are so many different ways for a bedroom to be eco-friendly. I also learned that the styles change very often. They change almost every decade.

For my project, I chose to do a video. I chose to do a movie because in order to do a ted talk or ignite you have to memorize. I am really bad at memorizing so doing a movie was the best option for me. A challenge during the movie was recording. I have a really noisy house because of my brother and sisters, and when I get them to be quieter my dog starts barking. Also, I didn’t want to record in school because I do not like the way it sounds when you use a box to record. So it was really hard for me to find a quiet space to record.

In conclusion, I learned how to be patient while I was recording. I also learned how to problem solve because a lot of times the pictures I wanted to use didn’t work out. Capstone is a really fun project. We had to pick a topic we wanted to do the project on, we had to do a lot of research, we had to do an interview, finally, we had to make the video. Even though this project was a big one it was my favorite project that I have ever done. 

March 11

Rube Goldberg- Post 2

Overall, the Rube Goldberg project was really exciting. I had a lot of fun doing this project, I had to be very creative and confident in what I was doing. The hardest part of the Rube Goldberg project was finding materials to make the machine. The sizes were never correct so I kept having to change things. Another hard thing was that my machine worked a bunch of times and I didn’t get it on video.  The easiest part was putting the WeVideo together.

I learned that sometimes you will face challenges but you have to use or face them to move forward. I learned this because I had lots of fails. So many things had gone wrong. I ended up having over 80 fails! I had so many fails I lost count at one point. The number got way too high.

My experience making the video was interesting. It was a lot easier than I had expected. I thought it was going to be super hard. It only took me two or three days to make and after that, I kept on editing it. At one point it got deleted and I had to restart it. But it is better now than it was before. My video ended up being a total of three minutes and 28 seconds.

This is my sketch:

Here is my video:

February 17

Rube Goldberg-Blog Post 1

The process of my Rube Goldberg machine was very hard. The hardest part was actually building the machine. It took at least 10 tries just to get one step right.

I had lots of challenges and troubles. One problem was that I could not find the right sizes of materials I needed. It was very hard to find things that are the right size and shape. Another problem was that my machine started with dominoes so if one fell over then the entire machine would start and I wouldn’t be able to get it on video.

Some of the materials I used were marbles, cars, blocks, dominoes, and car tracks.

After I tried out my sketch it did not work. My final machine looked very different than I had planned. Something that was originally in my sketch but I did not use in my machine was a water balloon. Something in my sketch that I did use in my machine was dominoes.

Overall the hardest part was building the machine. My final machine took 81 tries. So far I had lots of fun with my Rube Goldberg project.

This is my sketch:

 

November 6

Balanced and Unbalanced Forces

In science, we are learning about balanced and unbalanced forces.
We created two models to show what a balanced and unbalanced force looks like. In this project, I learned that net zero means balanced. One thing that was challenging was when I wanted to get over with the project. The project was to do a tug a war model then we had to do something with our Chromebook. One thing that I really enjoyed making pendulums. I hope you learn about the differences between an unbalanced force and a balanced force that creates net zero.

 

This is a model of an unbalanced force. The reason is because there is one person on one side and five people on the other side. The teams will not be fair. But if there were three people on each side the teams will be fair and equal. It would be a net zero. But since there are five people on one side and one on the other it is still unbalanced or not net zero anymore.

This is a model of a balanced force. The reason is because there are three people on each side. There is also the same amount of force pulling in each direction. Or scientifically balanced force can be called net zero. But if there were to be one person on one side and five people on the other side it would be unbalanced. Plus the teams will not be fair.