Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Rube Goldberg Machines

My mom had her students at school make Rube Goldberg Machines (Rube Goldberg machinecontraptiondevice, or apparatus is a deliberately over-engineered or overdone machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. Thanks Wikipedia.) and we thought that would be a fun thing to do with Emmaline for school today. We started out by watching some videos on youtube; it was pretty awesome. This one was especially cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdPDn1KUz_A  There are some other really fun ones if you just type in Rube Goldberg Machines. Anyway, we watched the videos and then I sent her in her room and told her to find things she could use to make a basic machine and this is what she came up with. (Again, another post that is mainly for my Mom.) 

Attempt #1.


#2- She decided the ball was too heavy. 




#3-Again, different ball. 



Success!! (I did finally show her that where the domino hits the ball is important, and maybe if she spaced them out a little more it would give it a little more power, but I really wanted her to come up with her ideas and fix the problems on her own.)


Second machine idea. 

Bloopers

Monday, January 9, 2012

Lol...


I'm not even going to pay attention to the fact that they're eating on the floor and sharing germs.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Emmaline's First Track Meet

Emmaline had her first track meet today. It was pretty cute, and fun to watch. She even ran the 800 (2 laps) and Royce and I would run to different parts of the inside of the track to encourage her, and she got around the first lap and said, okay, I give up, but we told her she could make it, and she kept going and ran the whole way!



Cheerleaders!! (It was really cold this morning. Well, Texas cold. Marta's hands are inside Royce's gloves.)












Sunday, January 1, 2012

Marta