The Nerdy Ninjas

The Nerdy Ninjas return to the planet Earth to save the world with their new super extra nerdy popsicle stick catapult. The Nerdy Ninjas are none other than the nerdy Jay, Erion, Zeke, and Nikita. We are building the one and only Nerdy Ninja catapult. The Nerdy Ninja catapult will be made with 44 popsicles sticks for the structure, hot glue to hold it together, and cardboard to hold the deadly nerdy launching bomb projectiles that go BOOM!!!!!!!!!! to save the Earth and stop the Alien War.

PBS Kids: Get Ready to Interview the DESIGN SQUAD's Adam and Judy

This week, we had success with our Hidden Alarm Challenge. (For to read more about our failed attempt last week, read this post.) The following video show our alarm working and how we might hide it or play a trick on someone with it.

The following are the questions we plan to ask Adam and Judy, when they visit The Herald next week. We will be interviewing them either in person or via iChat.

• How did you make the mars rover work?
• How did you make the paper table hold a heavy object?
• How did you make the buzzer work with a double AA battery?
• Did you use a buzzer from radio shack?
• Is the mars rover really hard to make?

Failing Buzzer — Ack!

The buzzer failed. Yes, building a working hidden buzzer is more difficult than it looks. Nikita and Zack's buzzer worked well and earlier on in our Hillwood Herald blog session, but the rest of us could not get our buzzers to work. The question now is, Why?

The tape? The batteries or the alarm? Too much aluminum or not enough. We're not sure, and we did compare our alarm set up to that of Nikita and Zack's. They looked pretty much the same, but clearly they did not work the same. Jay will be discussing the project with his dad for advice, and next Friday, we will try again.

Making a Newspaper Table

Judy and Adam are showing us how to make a newspaper table. They are trying to make a table out of newspapers so it can hold up heavy objects. They make different types of tables until it can hold a really heavy object. Finally, they succeed at making a table that could hold heavy objects.

Judy or Adam take photos and videos of all their work, and they put them on the Internet.

The Herald will be taking Judy and Adam's challenges, and we'll put our own photos and videos of our work on the web. Here is one of our first videos of the testing phase:

How to Enter the Constitution Poster Contest

Today is an important day in U.S. history — the U.S. Constitution was created. To help celebrate the occasion, Constitutional Facts.com has a contest open to students. Go to the website, read about the contest.  You go down on the page until you see download entry page and after you click scroll down and you type your name, age, grade, address. First you have to print out the form and write your city, state, and zip code,teacher or parent name. Then write your phone number or you can put mom or dad's phone number. Finally you you have to put your email, school name, and the school district.

Back to School at Hillwood

I used these words because they describe the Hillwood Academic Day School. I made the image on Wordle.net, a website for making pictures with words. The school we are in is in a house, and this is the first week back to school. You get to learn how to blog every Friday.

Every Friday, the upper students of the blog, called The Hillwood Herald, will report on local stories and the school. You can put story ideas for us in the suggestion box at the front of the school. Let us know what articles that you would like to read.

By Erion