By Tamar the Fifth Grader:

In our circuitry workshop on Monday morning, we did two things.  First, we made a little colored light go on.  We did this by first creasing a small piece of paper, and placed a piece of copper tape ( a thin strip of copper that is sticky on one side) on both sides of the crease and put a battery on one side, and the light on the other end, so that when the paper was folded along the crease, the battery touched both of the pieces of copper tape, and turned the light on.  It sounds simple, but it is very hard to make the copper tape meet in the right way to the battery and the light.  The second part was a sort of free tinker time.  We were told to make some sort of lamp or something like that, and those were the only major guidelines.  Some of the things made were a heat lamp, a flashlight, and a few other variations on those basic subjects.  I made a little light-up tube that lit up when you pressed it in a certain place.  I learned that even the simplest of circuits can be very hard to make.

This week [end of March, early April] each class at JCDS got to experience the basics in making kosher matza for Passover.  The challenge was, to mix water and flour together to make dough, kneed it, roll it out into a very thin sheet, and then bake it, taking 18 minutes or less to do so.  This was done in the parking lot outside on tables.  Each class came out one at a time, kids spreading out around the tables and doing all the things needed to make tasty and kosher matza.  We baked the matza in an oven made of bricks the fifth graders made.  Even though we didn’t use flour that was kosher for Passover, everyone felt very accomplished after making their own matza. This was truly an intriguing and informative activity.

This week in Design Lab, we finished building our Rube Goldberg machine!  A Rube Goldberg machine is a machine that is started by a human doing something, which sets off a chain reaction, which ends in a simple task being completed, like pouring a cup of water or dropping a block.  Our’s was started by someone sling-shooting a marble, which sets off dominoes, which lifts a pulley, which sets a marble rolling on a track, which sets off more dominoes, which set off another marble, which sets off a pulley, which starts a cart rolling, which knocks down a weighted cup, which knocks down colorful towers, and also pulls a ruler, which sets off dominoes, which starts a marble rolling, which sets off a mousetrap, which causes marbles to fall into a bag, which falls, and reveals a sign that says “JCDSRI Rocks!” and is splatter painted and signed by the whole school.  As that happens, someone off to the side pulls a string, which activates a confetti launcher that we made.  Sadly, but not unexpectedly, when we tried it out it didn’t work. So we just set it off manually when it didn’t work.  Both Lashon groups worked together, even though we were working on it separately.  It took about two months to complete because we only have Design Lab for 50 minutes a week. So altogether it was worked on for an hour and 40 minutes a week.  I think that it was a great way to work together and make all of our ideas work, and I think that everyone worked hard together and had fun.