Grabbers and Cars!

For the Innovators study of engineering they have been given a series of challenges. The latest was to make a "prosthetic arm" able to lift an object from two feet away. The students used a variety of materials but all succeeded in the challenge. 

The LeMay car museum offers field trips so the Innovators went to look at how cars are designed for speed and power and how propulsion has changed over time. They made and tested wooden cars and toured much of the museum asking great questions about the vehicles they saw.

This I Believe

Inspired by the “This I Believe” program on NPR (http://thisibelieve.org/) the Innovators wrote their own essays about something they believe in. Here are a few:

The Tattoo of Never Giving up  

By: Amelia E.          

When I was young I had problems with giving up when things where hard. When anything got hard at all I just gave up and got right past what the requirements where. I didn’t even try to do my very best. If I hadn’t have had the event I’m about to tell you about didn’t come up I might still be like that now. I found out that one small question can change your life forever in either a positive way or a negative way. No one should ever give up. Anyone can a reason to never give up. Here is my reason.

Once I saw a tattoo on my mother and I asked her what it was and why I couldn’t read it. She said that it meant never give up. I then asked her why it didn’t have ABC’s in it as I was only a kindergartener. She said that it was in Japanese. I didn’t ask her anything else because I was afraid I would end up getting a long and boring lecture about it which I would have to listen to because otherwise it would be rude to interrupt. 

From that day forward I have remembered that tattoo and what it meant. So now whenever something is hard I don’t give up. Once or twice I’ve heard me saying to myself that you need to be mentally strong and don’t give up. My mother has told me that challenges in your life if you get through them make you better stronger and smarter.

Anyone can find a reason to never give up. Improve your soul by never giving up in your life.  Many people just do not give up because either their parents or their teacher just does not want them to. I do it because giving up can change your life completely in a negative way.

You have something that is why you should never give up. Find it. If you do not find your reason you will have serious problems later in your life. When you are young you should find your reason before it is too late. Do not stop looking for your reason until you find it. If you do not find a reason to never give up the near future will be difficult.

Listen to your heart. It will guide you to your reason to not give up in your life. If you do not listen to your heart and you listen to your head then you will most likely not find your reason to never give up.

Once you find your reason you will never forget it. Your reason will stay with you for the rest of your life. Unless your reason is a made up reason and is not a true reason. Stay with it and you will succeed as long as you are truly trying.

I Believe In Friendship

By: Sofia  G.

When I was in first grade, I had no friends. It was really hard since I had no friends. When I tried joining friend groups, I’d always end up leaving those groups they were being mean to me or I scraped my knee doing something they had pushed me to do until I did it. I hated having no friends, and recess was never fun. I couldn’t make new friends, because everyone had friends and trying to join them never worked out. It made me feel like I was inside my own Lonely Bubble. I was always inside my lonely bubble at school. In math I felt alone. In silent reading, I felt alone. I really impacted my first grade life. All my classmates looked forward to recess, but I didn’t.

Friendship is a big part of my life. I will never let it go. I know what life is like without friendship from the six month long sample I got of it in first grade. I learned that everyone needs friends. Even the most desolate-by-themselves person needs friends. Even if you think you don’t need companions, you do. I know this because I thought that I could go all by myself, but I was wrong. I was always so lonely, and even trying to make friends was too hard.

The word ‘Lonely’ is an adjective. But it seems more than a noun. It seems like an emotion, a feeling. Maybe even a bad spirit, one that overwhelms you. In my dictionary, lonely is not just an adjective, but it is many, many, many things. It’s a distraction, an evil, a state, and most of all, an emotion. I think loneliness is evil. That’s why you shouldn’t feed it. Starve it by socializing and making lots of friends, and keeping those friends. But if you want to be alone occasionally, that’s okay.

Everyone must have friendship, and now I’m old enough to realize that. In first grade I thought I could go Lone Wolf, but in truth, I couldn’t. Being by yourself is bad, especially when you’re ignoring friendship to be by yourself. Nobody should want that. You should really try hard to make friends. It is the only way to avoid loneliness.

Making friends may be simple for some people, but for others, it’s not. Friendship isn’t always as easy as 1, 2, 3. It’s not always easy because the popular people who have lots of friends don’t like to include you if you have no friends. See? Friendship is about as simple as counting backwards from 100 by two. So potentially, you are completely in charge of your own social life. And if you leave it to someone else, nothing’s going to turn out right. No one’s going to pick out friends for you. Take charge of your life utterly and completely. Nothing is going to stop you.  And if you don’t, you will feel like you’ve started at a new school. You’ll be the one no one knows, you’ll be alone. It will be exactly the same, except nobody’s making an effort to get to know you.

I really, really, REALLY think friendship is super, super important.

                                         This I Believe.

            

  I Believe in Family and Friends

By: Ana M.

I believe in getting together family and friends because it’s sharing special times with people you know and love. One way our family celebrates is with neighborhood parties.

Every time my family hosts a neighborhood party I fill up with excitement. We always have such a good time. I get to see my friends and my parents get to see there’s. I don’t mind cooking, cleaning or mowing the lawn. It’s all worth it just to see the joy on every one’s face.

Every family party all the kids play games while the grownups talk. We grill steak, hotdogs, fish, and bratwursts too. There’s usually other stuff that guests bring. Like potato salad, steamed vegetables, fish, rolls, wine, dinks it’s all so good. Best of all then we have desert! There’s usually cobbler, ice cream, cookies, brownies, etc. while dinner is being made on the grill the kids play games: tag the table, board games, hide and seek, and tag. Last neighborhood party our neighbor Becky and her family brought homemade cream puffs. They were amazing cream puffs. All our neighbors bring the best dishes to the neighborhood parties.

After dinner and dessert the adults hang out and visit with one another while the kids usually go across the street to the park. At the park we usually play soccer or just hang out. After we get back from the park and it is getting darker that’s when we play games like ghost in the grave yard and flashlight tag. It gives the games a spookier affect.

One very special party was on Easter. My parents always tell me and my sister about when we were little we rescued a cat from the animal shelter. My sister named her Meowpurr, because she was only three years old. She was abused by her previous owner. She hid in our basement when we first got her. One day when my family was hosting a neighborhood party on the day of Easter Meowpurr came out of the basement from hiding. Everyone was so excited and happy. Everybody said Meowpurr! It was an Easter miracle, that was a great neighborhood party.

When the party ends, I’m so sad the neighborhood party is all over, but I knew it had to end at some point. At this time my family has a lot of cleaning. Even though it takes a long while of vacuuming, wiping, mopping, and sweeping. At the end I know it is all worth it. The cleaning, preparing, cooking, organizing. Neighborhood parties are a really super way to celebrate and get together with family and friends. My family has one almost every holiday.

Neighborhood parties are only one of the ways you can get together with friends and family but this is definitely one of my favorite ways to celebrate.  This I believe. 

Being Yourself

   By Kyle M.

This started when I was five or six, so I can’t remember all the details.

 There was a kid I knew and looked up to. Pretty soon I was styling my hair like him. After a while I was practically his doppelganger. His name was Brandan C. Dun dun duuuuun!

 That’s about when I found out I really liked acting and singing and writing and comedy and reading and history. Soon I found out that he hated those subjects with a passion like a thousand burning suns. Acting, he loathed it! The only part he would play was the narrator and even then, when he had the lines in front of him he had stage fright and then forgot about the script in front of him and totally blanked on his lines!

Writing was his kryptonite; he barely ever wrote anything and was always trying to think of jobs that didn’t require writing (the teacher and I both thought of reasons he had to use writing) then he would not write during writing time and said he would rather be a janitor/ die than have to write. His singing was like a dying cat being sarcastic while using a British accent with a hint of donkey with a sore throat and a French accent and a hippopotamus singing opera and barfing and being strangled by a boa constrictor and a hyena laughing while its head gets stuck in a plastic bag while exploding all at the same time.

 Comedy was his worst trait. He thought the chicken joke was funny! His jokes made no sense at all or were extremely inappropriate and sometimes both. Then he hit me in the butt with the hardest ball on the playground and laughed like it was the best joke in America, no the world, no the universe.

 Reading and him were like fire and ice he was in second grade but he still only read picture books and he still struggled with reading them.

 History was also not a strong point of his. He wished that there was still slaves and America was still a British colony so there would be less history to study he even would have died if there were 1 more revolution or war he threatened to jump off a cliff and yell that it was all his teachers fault if we had another history lesson and we had to restrain him to keep him in class.

 And I realized I would rather be myself then give up those things and be a total jerk and then I realized                 that I am the best person for me to be. So I went back to my old self. I kept the hairstyle because it was awesome and looked kinda like manga (which is awesome and Japanese and I love Japanese stuff. Like sushi. And the really cute stuffed animals. And manga, which I already mentioned). And I think you are the best person for you to be.

This I believe

I Believe in Time

By: Laynee R.

I believe in time. The time spent with your family and friends are the most valuable things in life. From rocking out on the drums with your cousin or having an awesome sleepover with your best friend. Some people think time is money but time is just a few more moments that you spend with your friends at Great Wolf Lodge or going to Canon Beach with your family.

              

               People waste time pondering about life ahead and what lies in the future but life happens and so does time.

               Friendships might break and mend over time. Family might fight and over time it might mend. Time will fix almost anything, When a loved one passes away, enemies become friends, moments become memories and lessons become knowledge.

               Time heals wounds whether it’s a scar or a bad memory. Wounds from a table that broke your finger or a slide that got you in the ER, or friends making you cry or a family member passing away. Time heals.

               Time ticks on a clock with seconds, minutes and hours. There are 60 seconds in a minute, 3,600 seconds in an hour, and 86,400 second in a day.

               Time isn’t measured by the clock when you’re having fun but is measured by the memories.

               On beach day with my friends we were walking and we thought oh! Why don’t we make a bath tub, so we got all of our tools and we stated to dig and dig and dig. We must have been digging for at least an hour and a half when we started to grab water, seaweed, and sand and started to put the seaweed on the bottom of the bath tub and after that we put sand on the sides of the tub so the water wouldn’t come pouring out of the bath tub. After all of the people finished Miss Becky took a picture of us and all of the girls sat in it and we were being goofy and offered each other, “mud and seaweed wrap.” I will always remember this story.

               Time can heal grief from a family member passing away.

               My great-great aunt, Rosie lived in a nursing home when her husband died. We thought she was 98 so I was hoping she would make it to 100. In September of 2013 we went to visit her and she was very healthy, she exercised and ate healthy and did that all her life. In early October of that same year I was at my grandparents and my mom called and told me that my great-great aunt had passed away. Earlier this year I learned that Rosie was actually 103. I believe in time. This I believe.

                

Literacy

Literacy is integrated into our concept of transitions. The Innovators read during Science and Social Studies as well as taking notes, writing up experiments and working on their first major presentation on a revolution.
The Innovators did their first novel study of "My Brother Sam is Dead", a book about the American Revolution. From reading and discussing this novel they were able to understand much of the conflict between the loyalists and the patriots and what a toll the war took on families. A study guide was completed that included new vocabulary from the book as well as questions that required interpreting what they had read.

The Innovators took on the Seabury book blog (http://seaburybookblog.blogspot.com/) this year. Each month they read and write a review of a different genre of book to be posted on the blog. The reviews are peer edited and then added to the blog for others to enjoy.

Finally, the Innovators have been working on their essay writing skills while looking at their personal values inspired by the NPR site, This I Believe (http://thisibelieve.org/). They are writing about something they believe in which we will share on another blog post when completed.

Integrating Art

Art is integrated around our concept of transitions as well as the topics we are studying in Social Studies and Science. We  looked at art in Colonial times, including portraits of famous American leaders and then the work of lesser known folk artists.

The students did their own version of folk art inspired by the Colonial artists as well as contemporary artist Heather Galler.

After looking at the art work of Diego Rivera who painted inspiring murals of the Mexican Revolution the Innovators were challenged to make their own mural representing America.

We also studied propaganda techniques from Colonial times to the present. The Innovators then made their own propaganda posters representing a cause they were interested in.

Next we will look at the invention of photography which changed how we see the world as well as the way artists create their work. This ties in with our study of the Civil War, when photojournalism was begun.