An awesome Balloon Race made from Kids

A group  of around five kids and one adult  did a race with balloons  PBS Kids Design Squad.  They did the race by using a straw, CD, and three balloons. And it worked — the balloons went super fast it zoomed threw the race way.

Before they used three balloons they used two balloons, and it wasn't  going as fast as the one with three balloons. Before that, they used CDs and plates. When they used  plates. it didn't go as fast when they used CDs. The balloons run on helium and it makes it go super fast.  The kids who did this was Shane, Aric, and Alexis.

Student Assignments for February

First off, congrats to Anya re: her front-page Scholastic news story!

Next, feel free to start the morning, practice typing using this website.

• Anya: Work on your next Scholastic story or consider how well you know your pet. Or comment on the news. Any interest in answering this question?
• Asiana, Natasha: What happened on January 31 in the past? Pick what interests you most and write about it. 
• Mia: What happened today in history?
• Oliver: Write a review about the Ben Folds Five show.
• Kennedy: Continue with your maser plan....
• Rubina: Continue on your other writing, but please also highlight Ms. Schmitt's upcoming show for the Hillwood community. You may also want to look at The Times' "Teenagers of the Times"; anything worth sharing with the Hillwood community?

• Happy New Year! The Ramblers and I are excited to start off 2013 with our favorite place to play in SF – at the Randall Museum theater - Hope you can make this fun, all ages, family music show! All the best, Gayle The 2013 SF Bluegrass & Old Time Festival Presents: Gayle Schmitt & the Toodala Ramblers On guitar, fiddle, banjo, mandolin and stand up bass! Saturday, February 9, 2013 Randall Museum 199 Museum Way, SF - www.randallmuseum.org Two Shows @ 1 & 3 PM $6 Kids / $9 Adults (limited seating at each for plenty of dancing room!) These shows are part of the San Francisco Bluegrass and Old Time Festival which takes place at venues all over the Bay area from February 8 - 17th. Advance tickets and more information visit: www.sfbluegrass.org Email gaylesongs@earthlink.net with questions or any trouble getting tickets Foot stomping fun for the whole family! www.gaylesongs.com

• Angela:  Look at The Times' "Teenagers of the Times"; anything worth sharing with the Hillwood community?
• Claire: Please pick one or more of the items below to write about:
• *Snack Sale!*  Don't forget that the snack/bake sales to benefit the "Pennies For Patients" program will begin next Thursday.  Healthy snacks are encouraged.  If you cut or portion them out, try to make them all about the same size (makes it easier for us to price them)if you use any ingredients that are known allergens please list them so no one has a reactionsweets are OK, but we would like encourage healthy eating so healthy snacks would be great!appearance counts!  When you wrap them up make them pretty and appealing so they sell out fast!if you send them in a container that you need back, please make sure your name is on itAnd don't forget to send your kids with a little extra spending money to buy a tasty snack so we can raise lots of Money for "Pennies for Patients"There is a flyer at the counter about the program and it is also attached to this email.
• *Fashion Design Class*  Lidia's after-school Fashion Design Class will start on Monday and will be 10 sessions long. Lidia will help the kids make wonderful and cool outfits out of things you aren't even using now! There is a hand out the counter about this after-school class and it is also attached to this email.  Checks should be made out to Lidia Cortina
• *School Uniform* As you all know, we do have a required uniform at school. Lately we have noticed that it has been not adhered to as well as we would like.For Boys:  Blue pants, solid white shirt or white Hillwood t-shirt, green sweater or Hillwood Sweatshirt.For Girls:  Blue pants, blue/green "Blackwatch Plaid" skirt or skort, white shirt or white Hillwood t-shirt, green sweater or Hillwood Sweatshirt.Tights or leggings should be navy, black, white or green.  For All Students:  Shoes should be appropriate for school yard.  Jackets can be any color but are only to be worn outside.  If kids are cold inside please send an extra hoodie to school. It is best for everyone if all students follow these guidelines. Do not hesitate to ask if you or your children have any question about whether a particular item is appropriate for school.  

When you are done:

• Listen today's StoryCorps. 
• Begin playing around with Google Docs as a tool for organizing your ideas and various drafts of your news stories.
• Play around with the website PlaceSpotting and write a post about it.
• Watch projects on the Design Squad website. 
• Add songs to Radio Hillwood.
• Explore the math games on this website.

Bat on flower from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo.
http://www.scholastic.com/content/collateral_resources/pdf/m/mlb_poster.pdf

The Hillwood Hearald Takes On the Design Squad Challenge

Today is the day we finish up our PBS Design Squad Challenges. We will be uploading videos of our contraptions, as well as a description about our teams and design and engineering plans.

The questions we will be answering are: 

• Tell us about your team. 
(What's your team name/story? Who's on your team?)

• Describe your project. 
(What activity did you build big and why? How did you build it?)

Here is a video from last week:

Medusa and Her Team.

Our team is called "Medusa and her Minions". Our team consists of Jennifer, Kayla, and Rubina. We are making a huge pop-fly for PBS Kids. Our whole group goes to Hillwood. Our pop-fly is going to be made out of

• Bungee Cords
• Planks of Wood
• Paint
• Nails
• Hot Glue Gun

Next week we are going to make the form and the week after that we are going to paint the invention. Then, our pop-fly is going to be done and we will present it and see if it even works.
Our pop-fly is going to be 3.5 feet long and 4.0 feet wide.

Our whole team has seem Judy and Adam and we have submitted some of our other mini works to PBS Kids. Our whole class, 5-6, has interviewed Judy and Adam.

For more information about Judy and Adam posts that we made, you can just type in Design Squad or read this post.

WATCH THE LASTEST EPISODE OF DESIGN SQUAD-Judy and Adam Aim For The Sky!

Written By: Rubina, Kayla, and Jennifer.

Team Wind

Anya, Angela, and I are going to make a miniature city out of cardboard, plastic, bottles, yogurt cartons, and water. We are hoping to make a small windmill that can spin by making a fan to blow air and houses out of yogurt cartoons. We will also make little trees, bushes and other figures like humans out of cardboard. We also hope to make a stream with real water. We will add pizza tables as picnic tables in the cardboard made park.

We are doing this project because we have been doing the Design Squad Challenges for the past year and this is one of the challenges. This challenge is where you take one of the challenges from the before and make it over sized.

Our class got connected to the Design Squad by meeting Adam and Judy who work for the Design Squad. The have designed real cars and built electric dresses. Adam and Judy came to our school so we could interview them.

Anya is going to build the windmill, Angela will make the trees, bushes, and picnic tables, and I will create the houses.

By: Angela V. and Faryn D.

Friday Assignments

Congratulations, everyone — the yearbook is headed to the printer. What were a few of the last-minute changes? A change of uniform:

Today, we will settle on our PBS Kids Design Squad entry and make the supply shopping list. We will divide up into two teams: Anya, one team will be making your design; Nikita, Jay, and Erion, you three will combine your designs into one.

Each team should answer the following questions from the entry page (first answer them in a blog post; next week, we will include them when we upload our entries):

• Tell us about your team.
  (What's your team name/story? Who's on your team?)
  
• Describe your project.
  (What activity did you build big and why? How did you build it?)

If we have time, we will watch a TED video about a 14-year-old Malawian boy who built a windmill to power his family's home. Now at 24, William Kamkwamba, who spoke at TED, shares in his own words the moving tale of invention that changed his life.

Friday's Assignments

This week, we begin writing our articles for the Hillwood yearbook. Once we finish our yearbooks, we will return to the Build Big Contest.

Click through a few pages from last year's book. What might we do differently this year? Who will design the cover?

Hillwood Academic Day School by Hillwood Uppergrades 2009-2010 | Make Your Own Book

Here is our current list of assignments and story ideas:

1) Rubina:
• Miss Schmitt and music at Hillwood
• Miss Lydia and Spanish at Hillwood

2) Anya:
• Zach, Hillwood's mascot and friend
• The Grantzes
• Lindsey Z.'s secret philanthropy organization

3) Nikita:
• Jessica and science with the upper-graders
• DESIGN SQUAD Challenges

4) Jay and Erion:
• Miss Tom and the second to fourth graders
• Miss Dawson and the kinders and first graders (include the big news of Miss Dawson's engagement)

5) Angela
• The Hillwood Herald
• Rubina's mom and art at Hillwood

6) Jennifer
• Fundraisers at Hillwood (Pennies for Patients and the Walk-a-thon)
• The December Talent Show

7) Faryn
• International Day
• Camp Hillwood

8) Zeke
• Hillwood's outings in San Francisco, from Beauty and the Beast to protesting fast-food in the city
• Big current events from throughout the year (Japan earthquake, what else?)
• What is the typical day like at Hillwood?

The Hillwood Herald

Each Friday, we write the blog of the school which is by the upper graders. We have it every morning on Friday from 9:00 to 10:30. We are assigned a topic to write about by Ms. Moorhead. We than research the topic and write a post about it. Afterwards we post it and people who read the Hillwood Herald read it! Sometimes. we work together and sometimes we are visited by the Design Squad or other people. We also video each other about the posts we did. Close to the end of the posting, some one tells the rest of the class about their post Currently, we are choosing a partner to work with, and with the partner, we are going to create an over sized design of creations which Adam and Judy talked about in the past. Many important topics we write about is the events that happen at the Hillwood Herald like Walk-a-Thons and Pennies for Patients. Besides doing current events on the computer, we write about them at school on paper as well which we talk about on Friday.

Design Squad Giant Pop-Fly Challenge

Jay and Erion are making a giant pop fly. We got the mini pop-fly directions from the Design Squad website. We will put a paint can, put the wooden board through the handle of the paint can, at the end there is a ball, and when somebody jumps on the other end the ball flies.

Watch the Latest Episode of DESIGN SQUAD — Judy and Adam Aim for the Sky!

Engineers and designers Judy and Adam worked with Felipe, a 15-year-old pilot, to design and build a human-powered flying machine. Their efforts — the basis of last week's DESIGN SQUAD on PBS — had a  little help from NASA.

Click here to read The Hillwood Herald's coverage of Judy and Adam with DESIGN SQUAD. Both Judy and Adam came to Hillwood to be interviewed about their jobs, television shows, and challenges.

Making the Kinetic Sculpture Move

Today, Faryn and I made a kinetic sculpture, which is one of the DESIGN SQUAD challenges. It took a lot of brain power, but we somehow managed to make a sculpture that only somewhat failed.

We started out not knowing how in the world we could make something that could spin by just blowing on it. At first, we had an idea with pipe cleaners until Faryn had one of her famous ideas and we decided to use paper cups. It didn't look so pretty, but it worked. Also, it took a lot of time and effort. Typically, challenges that look easy to make are not so easy!

At first I thought maybe we should cut out a swirly type pattern out of colored paper, but Faryn had an idea that we could maybe use the metal washers to hold up something that could spin with the power of wind. We tried to connect the paper cups to the metal washers, but it just wouldn't stick. Then we tried colored beads around two centimeters long to attach the washers to and, well let's just say they worked and our sculpture includes colorful beads.

Design Squad is made up of two engineers named Judy and Adam (see photo to the right) who help kids create their dreams through engineering. On their website at PBS Kids, Judy and Adam have lots of different challenges that you can try and plenty of videos for you to watch. You can read about The Hillwood Herald interview with Judy and Adam here.

You can watch the latest episode of DESIGN SQUAD on the website. Also, don't missing seeing Judy and Adam in person at the nearby Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of Berkeley.

• WHAT: Meet Design Squad Nation hosts Judy and Adam, watch sneak peeks of new episodes, and try engineering challenges inspired by the show!  
• WHEN: Saturday, February 26th  from 11:00 am-4:00 pm 
• WHERE: Lawrence Hall of Science 

For more information, visit www.lawrencehallofscience.org.

Photo credits: PBS Kids (top and bottom photos), The Hillwood Herald (middle photo)

Making a Motor Car!

 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.

Written By: Rubina and Anya

Our Kinetic Sculpture Failed, But There's Still Next Week to Try

Today Zeke, Angela, and I made a Kinetic Sculpture from the DESIGN SQUAD television show, which is on PBS each week. We used marshmallows, pipe cleaners, paper cups, wooden skewers, cardboard, putty, duct tape, and green baskets. While our sculptures looked, they did not always work. The point of the challenge is to make your sculpture move with only air. This is harder than it sounds.

We also had a guest speaker named Lindsey. She is friends with our teacher and DESIGN SQUAD, who is made up of Judy and Adam. Judy and Adam are engineers who have designed all of the challenges we have been doing in class. Even though they are on national TV, they still came to talk to The Hillwood Herald. (You can read about our interview with them here.) Lindsey and her parents, who came to visit her from Kansas, helped up with our challenges. We had a lot of fun building our sculpture, even though we didn't accomplish anything with it working. Next week we will have a lot of fun building a motor powered car.

Images: PBS Kids DESIGN SQUAD

A Challenge to Blow in the Wind!

Today we made another sculpture, as part of the DESIGN SQUAD challenges that engineers Judy and Adam put together. The kinetic sculpture is a challenge where we try to make a sculpture move when we blow. But mine didn't work that way! To make mine work, you need to grab it and spin it with your hands.

To help us today, Lindsey (a friend of Mrs. Moorhead's) came in with her parents from Kansas and gave us a speech about what she does and how she is now part of San Francisco's Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy. She works for a IDEO, which is where Judy and Adam work when they are not filming DESIGN SQUAD for PBS Kids.

The company is where people are employed to help other companies design products and services. Lindsey even knows about how the company, with its designers and engineers, helped create the mouse with a rolling ball inside it. Lindsey also talked about this society where you pass on an 100 dollar bill to people in need. Her friend gave the 100 dollar bill to her and told her to pass it on. This seem to be like the movie "Pay It Forward." The society most likely didn't even start here in San Francisco, and it has groups of people donating 100 bills in Greece and New York.

As kids, we could do something similar, but with much less money. Right now, we are doing a Hillwood bake sale to raise money. We also collect change for the Pennies for Patients program, which is also about making a little bit of money do more than you might think possible at first. Lindsey is giving her one hundred dollars to Ms. Woods for the Hillwood upper-grade class.

The Failing Motor Failed

The failing motor failed. The motor worked but it couldn't drive like a car. The motor made a good fan. The instructions came from Design Squad at the PBS kids website.We used a motor, skewers, a battery holder, batteries, faucet washers, and wires.We will try to improve it next time

Kinetic Sculpture Somewhat Failed

Today, Alysen and I made a Kinetic sculpture from the Design Squad challenges. The challenge was to make something that spins and stays up on a stick.

It was super tough to figure out how to make it stay up. We had to try at least four different ways to keep the "sails" up.

To make the "sails", we cut up a small paper cup into three parts and taped them onto about two centimeter beads with large holes in the middle.

To make the base we stuck three small scewers in to the bottom of a paper cut in different places.

The hardest thing was to was keep the the "sails" up so the LAST thing we tried was to get metal washers and put poster putty around the scewers. We put the washers onto the poster putty so the washers stuck then put the "sails" on.

It didn't work too well for us, but you can do whatever you want to make it work! Good luck!

Dance Pad Mania: The Revenge (and Challenge) of the Lightbulbs

Today, February 18th, Faryn and I made a dance pad for the DESIGN SQUAD Challenge. This challenge is one of many that The Hillwood Herald has done as part of the PBS Kids television show. As reporters, we interviewed Judy and Adam at Hillwood, the engineers and starts who lead the show and design all the different challenges. (Click here to read our coverage about the show and Judy and Adam.)

Our dance pad consisted of only a battery and a lightbulb, as some buzzers were missing and the rest were being used. Even though our challenge creation does not sound and look like a lot, it took a while to figure out how exactly we were going to connect the wires with the lightbulb and how we were going to trigger it to work.

As we were trying to figure out how we were going to trigger our devices, I thought back to how Judy and Adam triggered their initial challenge through cardboard. I also recalled how last week, Jake, Erion, and I used duct tape and cardboard. Faryn and I had trouble making a cardboard trigger at first, but we finally got the wire to stop moving out of place. From there, we were able to press the cardboard and trigger the lightbulb, so that it would glow. If you would like to try this challenge yourself, start by reading the directions on the DESIGN SQUAD website. All the needed materials are easily found, either at your home or Radio Shack or your neighborhood hardware store. While a lower-grade student might need help with this project, an upper-grader can do it on his or her own.

Other classmates made Rubber Band Cars, which is also a DESIGN SQUAD challenge from Judy and Adam. (At the end of Judy and Adam's "Apache Skateboard" show, you can watch them build a rubber band car -- it's actually more difficult than it looks!)

DESIGN SQUAD's purpose is to help regular kids make their dreams come true through engineering. On the DESIGN SQUAD Website there are plenty of videos that anyone can watch showing Judy and Adam helping kids and doing challenges together.

The latest DESIGN SQUAD show is a two-part series about Adam and Judy designing clothing in New York. When they spoke to The Hillwood Herald, both explained how this was one of the more stressful challenges. Of course, if you are more into learning all about worm juice and engineering a bike to transport fresh produce in London, watch the previous episode, titled "Garden to Go."

Also, don't missing seeing Judy and Adam at the nearby Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of Berkeley. 

WHAT: Meet Design Squad Nation hosts Judy and Adam, watch sneak peeks of new episodes, and try engineering challenges inspired by the show!

WHEN: Saturday, February 26th  from 11:00 am-4:00 pm 

WHERE: Lawrence Hall of Science 

Judy and Adam will be launching their giant catapult! Watch the stage shows at 11:00 am and 1:00 pm for some super-sized fun! There will also be an Ingenuity in Action exhibit and the Ingenuity Lab, where you can build and test rockets, ping pong ball launchers, bridges, and your own flying things.

You will have to pay to get into the museum, which costs $12 for adults and either $9 or $6 for children. But once inside, all the activities are free. For more information, visit www.lawrencehallofscience.org.

Here's a video clip that highlights their show:

The Awesome Rubber Band Car Wins!

Erion, Nikita, and I made a rubber band car. We made it differently from the directions told us to, because we wanted it to behave differently. We also had some ideas about how we might make it better. You can read the basic instructions on the PBS Kids website.

Deviating from the directions worked for us! We beat Jake and Zeke's rubber band powered car in a race. The car was fast and could last, or run, a long. We used putty, duct tape, skewers, faucet washers, CDs, and a rubber band to make the vehicle. The cardboard was 5 by 6 inches long. The rubber band car had a extra pair of wheels and customized wheels.

The following video clip shows a giant rubber band car made for humans to ride. It is from the Makers' Faire in Austin. The two DESIGN SQUAD engineers are not Adam or Judy. Rather, they are hosts from an earlier season of the show.

Rubber Band Car Pushed to the Limit

This week, The Hillwood Herald has a new reporter, Zeke, who has just started at the school. Together, we built a rubber band car.

Building a rubber band car is pretty easy (click for directions). Our car beat the other team once, but then our car fell apart. We had a lot of fun building it and also got some video and pictures of it, which will be posted on the site over the next few days. Now our car is all in pieces. Fortunately, it only took about fifteen minutes to build, and it was worth it.

We got the idea from Design Squad on PBS Kids. The project ended up being a lot of fun. If really was a challenge, but one we did quickly.

We built our car by first making a body out of a cut out of a piece of cardboard. Then we put a skewer through the piece of cardboard. From there, we put two CD's on the skewers and stuck them to the skewer with putty. Finally, we attached a rubber band to the body and skewer and it worked. We won twice and the other team lost both times.

By Jake and Zeke

Dance Pad for Mice

Today Jennifer and I, Anya, built a dance pad for mice. We built it on top of a box. Inside the box, is a restaurant for mice.

We started the dance pad by taping aluminum foil to the top of a box. Next we taped a battery onto the foil. Then we attached a buzzer to the battery. As soon as we attached the buzzer to the battery, it started buzzing. Next we tried to attach a lightbulb, it didn't work. Then we tried adding another battery, it still didn't. While Jennifer worked on the lightbulb, I puttied a disk to the inside of the box. The disk reflected light into the box lighting up the restaurant.

When we finally got the lightbulb to work we were super happy. If you want to make a dance pad go to Design Squad Nation.