What do Towers do?
Happy Friday everyone! We had another wonderful day of Summer School! We started our morning making more towers to use with our earthquake simulator. We also tried putting different things in our city and seeing what would happen when we shook it. We also made towers that were taller than us using the lego blocks and played with the people figures and finger puppets. Some of us helped Nimo roll up newspapers to use for our tower building later. We worked very hard and prepared a total of 50 tubes!
After we had our snacks, we changed into our swimming gear and had a blast playing in the pool! As usual, we split the group up into two and while one group was splishing and splashing the heat away, the other group stayed in Flowers with Nimo and Vieda to build a giant tower! We thought it would be easy, we are masters at building tall towers, however the newspaper tubes we were using were flimsy and made the whole thing much harder. We gathered together with our friends to find out some way to make the newspaper tower stand up. We tried a lot of ideas and finally we thought of making legs for the tower to help it stand. However, we had another problem, the newspapers tubes were too wobbly and couldn’t support the tower. We made a small ring to put our tower inside to keep the legs from spreading too far out. Our ideas worked and we were finally able to get a tower that could stand by itself. However, even a small bit of wind knocked the tower over. We put on our thinking caps again to try and figure out what we could do to help our tower be more stable.
M: I can see a Triangle shape and a diamond shape!
K: We tried to go up (build the tower higher), but it fell down. We can use tape.
A: When the wind blows it falls down.
M: If we had rocks it would be stronger.
Nimo: How can we make the legs stronger so it doesn’t move around so much?
A: Put it inside the square.
M: Maybe if you put the two legs inside the diamond and the other two outside.
We tried many of our friend’s great ideas, but the tower was still very wobbly.
M: I think this is paper and it’s bent.
We tried connecting the legs to the diamond and all of a sudden the legs stopped spreading out and the tower looked more stable. We used a fan to see if the wind would knock the tower over. Nimo told us that the diamond part was like the base or foundation and that part can help buildings be more stable. Our teachers will let us play with the newspaper tubes again on Monday so we can use what we learned today to make a bigger and stronger tower!
Before we had our lunch we did our Question of the Day.
Y: Do you know what towers do?
About half of our class today answered yes, Nimo asked them what they thought the towers did.
A: People can see everything.
S: Do you like towers?
Nimo: No, because I’m scared of high places.
M: If you jump and bump on the ground, you will get hurt.
A: I like riding airplanes and sitting next to the windows because I can see the clouds. I love clouds because they are very soft!
M: I like towers because they are tall and they glow.
Nimo: How many people are scared of tall places?
A few of our friends raised their hands.
Nimo: How many people are scared of spiders.
Some friends raised their hands.
Nimo: Some of us are afraid of high places, but not scared of spiders. Some are scared of spiders and not afraid of high places, and maybe some are scared of both. We are all different so we all had different things we are scared of.
M: I’m not scared of monsters, but I’m scared of Big Foot.
A: Big Foot is so big, he’s much bigger than all of us!
M: Monsters are going to eat everyone!
We shared with our friends of some of the things we were scared of then we got back to the topic about towers.
K: Tokyo Tower have no hands and feet so it doesn’t do anything.
M: You can eat at restaurants.
A: When I went to Tokyo Tower I booked two tickets then we went up high and I walked on glass!
M: You can pray to God next to Tokyo Tower.
A: There is a temple next to Tokyo Tower.
Nimo showed us a few pictures of towers and asked us if we knew what the tower was.
The first picture was a tower that looked a lot like Tokyo Tower.
K: A Car Tower.
L: Tokyo Tower.
R: Eiffel Tower.
We took a look at the second tower that looked a lot like the tower we see outside.
M: That’s Tokyo Tower!
Our third picture was another one we have seen before.
C: Tokyo Sky Tree!
Nimo told us that these towers send out waves we can’t see that helps us watch TV and listen to music on the radio! Next, we took a look at a picture of the Burj Khalifa.
M: It’s shiny!
K: It’s like the statue of liberty.
We learned that some towers are places where people live and there are lots of restaurants and offices. Next up was a picture of the Big Ben.
M: I went to Tokyo Tower and I saw this tower from there.
M: I know it, but I don’t know the name, it’s in a different country.
R: My mom lived in London.
M: It sounds the alarm and shows the time.
K: When it’s time to go home it goes ding dong.
Our last picture was the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
M: I know that one too! I don’t know the name, but it’s in Italy.
Nimo told us that this tower used to be a bell tower, but it is now a famous place where people from all over the world come to see. It was amazing to learn that there were so many jobs towers could do!
Love,
Flowers