The Hillwood Herald is the news blog of Hillwood Academic Day School. Written and published by the school’s upper grades (fifth through eighth), this blog tracks student, staff, and family happenings at the school.
Showing posts with label Anya Interviews Rubina. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anya Interviews Rubina. Show all posts
This month the upper-graders finished reading the play Cyrano de Bergerac y Edmond Rostand. Cyrano de Bergerac is about a man named Cyrano who falls in love with his cousin Roxane. But Roxane is in love with a handsome man named Christian. Who will Roxane chose? I won't ruin the story for you. This is a picture of Puccini.
There is also an opera be Franco Alfano. Franco Alfano was the student of Giacomo Puccini. Puccini wrote many operas before. He wrote Turandot, Tosca, Madame Butterfly, La Bohema, Manon Lascaut, and Gianni Schicchi. Those are not all of his operas. He has much more. His Turandot was not finished by him. Franco Alfano finished him. Franco Alfano wrote an opera Cyrano de Bergerac.
Edmond Rostand was born on April 1, 1868 and died on December 2, 1918. He also wrote Les Romanesques. This is a photo of Edmond Rostand.
Placido Domingo sang Cyrano at the San Francisco Opera this season.
Today, we (Anya and Rubina) are making a motor car. So far we are still stripping the wires, and while most students write their blog posts for The Herald when they are done building their challenge, we are posting as we go. This may help readers make their own DESIGN SQUAD motorized car.
As It Happens We just finished stripping the wires, and Anya is starting to attach a faucet washer to the motor. Using putty, Anya is sticking the faucet washer to the motor. No! It's not working -- the poster putty is not working! Woohoo! The putty worked! Anya is about to start the motor... It is working! Yay!
Now we are going to attach the motor to the cardboard. Anya and I have to clear the platform of our work. We hope that the putty will not disconnect. Time for the attaching the wheels to the cardboard... It is working! Eureka! Anya has to restart because she put the poster putty around the motor so the motor could not move. We are restarting the project.
Anya is putting the putty on faucet washer again. It works, again! The motor is already attached to the cardboard. Anya has an idea! We shall put a skewer at the front of the vehicle to knock out all of the other cars racing. JK! JK! JK! No, we need the skewer to turn the motor on. The motor is working when the skewer pokes the wire into the battery. We need to tape the skewer to the cardboard. Actually, we already did! Eureka once again! Now we need to attach the last three wheels. We are beginning to attach the back wheels. Let's see if they work.
Duck Tapes Saves the Day
Anya decided to use sparkling wires to attach the other three wheels to the cardboard. Never mind, no sparkling wires -- just plain old duck tape. This is hard. We need two more CDs for wheels. We have just negotiated to get two more CDs from the other group, which is trying to build their motorized car faster and better than ours. We are using duck tape to tape the two extra CDs on... uh oh! The CDs are not properly attached! One CD is spinning but the other one fell off.
Whew. Finally, everything is working.
Judy's Fashionable Dog Models
Below is a video from Judy, one of the engineers from DESIGN SQUAD. In the video is her dog, a pug -- like my dog. Adam, her engineering partner, had his mom make the pug a lot of different outfits to go along with their show on engineering fashion.
Angela and I are making a dance pad. So far, we are still figuring it out. Angela is taping the buzzer and the battery to a piece of cardboard. Angela has to restart the whole thing because she taped the buzzer the wrong side up so the microphone out of which the sound comes out of is blocked by the cardboard. Angela and I are planning to make a hole under the buzzer so that the hole out of which the sound come out of is on the side of the hole in the cardboard. Smart!
WE SUCCEEDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOOO!!!!! Now if you press both sides of the battery the buzzer will start buzzing!
We did this challenge after Judy and Adam, engineers and the hosts of DESIGN SQUAD on www.pbskids.org.
The San Francisco Ballet is performing The Nutcracker again this year. Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky wrote The Nutcracker.
The very first performance of The Nutcracker outside of Russia, first took place in England in 1934. The performance was staged by Nicholas Sergeyev. It was an unabridged version of The Nutcracker. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo performed The Nutcracker in New York. But it was an abridged version. It was set in 1940 by Alexandra Fedorova.
The ballet's very first full performance was set on December 24, 1944, by the SF Ballet. It was staged by William Christensen.
Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 and died on November 6, 1893. Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer im the Romantic era. He wrote symphonies, operas, ballets, instrumental and chamber music.
This is a picture of Puccini.
This is a photo of Edmond Rostand.
