SBC3 activity 3 – The thief of wishes

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The thief of wishes

(Creative Commons, Dandelion Field, October 22, 2014)

Lola appreciated the light blue sky laying on the soft green grass as she played around with a flower. After school, without wasting a single second, she had fled to her grandparent’s house were they had a gigantic garden full of puffy white flowers. Dandelions were her favorite flowers, she remembered playing with them when she was small, trying to blow off all the petals away.

On her 9th birthday, Lola’s grandparents had given her a very important gift and secret. It was a box, a beautiful little box painted dark brown like her grandfather’s eyes and bright gold just like the pieces of blond hair her grandmother used to have. But this box wasn’t an ordinary one. “If you blow all the petals of a dandelion away, and keep the stem of the flower in the box, your wish will become true, as long as you keep them inside it.” Her grandparents had told her at the same time they made her promise not to share the secret. “One more thing. Just use the box for special and important wishes.” they added. Of course, she didn’t believe this weird legend of making wishes come true, until one day, after not studying for an important exam, she decided to use it as a proof. The next day, she discovered this wasn’t a game. The exam grade stated this: she had gotten an A+.

Lola checked her watch. It was already 10:00 pm! She should stop dreaming and head home. Lola took her bike, said goodbye to her grandparents and in two minutes, she was at home. Since it was late, she decided to go straight to bed.

At around 2:00 am, a noise woke Lola up. Lazily, she opened her eyes to see a silhouette standing at her night table right were she normally kept her wish box. The wish box! In a jump, Lola stood up and went running to the thief right when he/she had taken her box. She ran and ran trying to catch the thief until it was just impossible to follow him/her. Suddenly, the thief turned his/her head around and Lola saw the eyes. Those eyes… Those dark brown eyes… They were just too similar, Lola couldn’t help realizing. “Grandpa” she whispered shocked.

 

Hello everybody!

I’m sure you all have wonderful and super creative minds, so don’t leave Lola alone wondering what’s going on! Help me finish the story and help Lola figure out why her grandfather stole the wish box so the mystery can be solved. Let’s go!

 

 

Cavalcade of the Three Wise Men!

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This Christmas, I went to Madrid, Spain to visit my family.

Around the world, people believe in Santa Claus, but in Spain, it is different. We believe in the Three Wise Men that came to adore the baby Jesus. They come the 5th of January night, and they leave gifts for the kids.

Normally, the 5th of January, there is a cavalcade, in which people go dressed as dancers, musicians or even sea creatures. At the end of the cavalcade, there always comes three big trucks with decorations of each Wise Men. Melchor, Gaspar and Baltasar.

The thing is, that if you want to be in front of the cavalcade, you need to get there like three hours before it starts. If you are going to be there four three hours waiting, then you need to bring chairs and carpets to sit on the floor.

On the 5th of January, my cousins and our family went there like at three to be at the first line when the cavalcade started. Meanwhile, we played cards, and many other games. And when the cavalcade was going to start, guess what? We were in the front row!

I loved this event because you get to learn that if you get somewhere soon, then, you will have a good reward. And also it is a very beautiful and fun Spanish tradition!

Camping, a great event!

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Last summer, I went with the Scouts in Leon, Spain. This was a great group of friends that I knew. I stayed 15 days with them camping on a huge field. It was beautiful and you could see the mountains from were we were camping. In the middle of those two weeks, we had four days of completely walking through Leon only stopping to eat at the shade of a big tree, or stopping when the sunsets at a little village where we had to sleep outside under the roof of a little church. Before going to bed (actually sleeping bags), we had to cook our food that we had been caring all the way from the camp. It was great smelling the pasta melting with the warm water, while we were surrounded by cold breezes of air that froze our feet. At night, we took our sleeping bags, and bring them to the floor of the church, and as close as caned sardines, we sleep with a huge smile on our face proud of all the effort we had done and hugely happy to finally rest.

Next morning, all the scouts woke up with red noses just like Rudolf the reindeer from the cold of last night. Once we were completely awake by the sound of the bell the monitors rang, we changed on the sacs and made a circle to eat breakfast: Milk with some cookies, (we were lucky if we there was nutella inside them). Once we were ready, we took our bags, and stared walking through the green forests were the cold went in a flash leaving the sweat come by. It was great walking through all the places. Whether there were trees, rocks, green grass walking through a mountain, we would always see beautiful plants, flowers, trees and best of all, the views. Whenever there was a hill we had to climb, you couldn’t hear anything as long as it was the breath from all the kids. But when there was a descent, you could hear all the grateful kids singing songs along with the sound of nature.

The rest of the days that we walked, were as fun and awaesome as the first one, and not only because you learned the beauty of nature, because you learned so much from the other people while you walked, and learned what a true friendship was when you had to cheer up a friend that was left behind. You could also learn so many jokes and songs, that in only four days you would have learned 20 of them.

Even though this thing of the Scouts might seem hard because of walking so much while it was freezing and sleeping in a sleeping bag instead of sleeping in a confortable bed, this is a great experience that you should all try it. Because it changes the view of things, and it makes you feel so good when you are back at your home sweet home, that you get to apriciate all the things that you live with in the normal day.

Some of you might think: ‘Well, going with the Scouts doesn’t seem like that’s the best activity you can do in summer. You could so easily be on a swimming pool drinking a fresh lemonade, or being on a cozy sofa while watching your favorite TV show.’ Ok, but you might not get that much fun than if you go to the scouts. Because if you have never swim in a river, or sang songs while watching more interesting things than in TV, that’s the best place for you to go.

And if you are one of those grumpy persons who go to the Scouts and discover that you are having a hard time, here goes the secret of the Scouts to have a good time: Be POSITIVE 🙂

This an important event that happened to me some months ago, which I will never forget!! -Alicia Ramos

How do I learn best?

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How I learn best is by watching other people do it, and then repeat it. I like watching people doing it first, and then do it myself. I also learn when the teachers repeat several times what we have to do, since for me technology is a little difficult. Lastly, I am a person who asks a lot of questions, so I would do so to learn better. This are the things that I do to learn better. -Alicia Ramos

My expectations for technology class.

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My expectations for this class are very simple. I would like to learn simple things that will help me later on but also cool things about technology such as making robots and other things. My expectations would be to be fluent making blogs, and being able to discover new websites were we can learn things about technology. This are my expectations for technology class. -Alicia Ramos

Acetone & Water melting a foam cup Experiment.

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Try this out! Take a foam cup and some acetone, or nail polish remover. Then, put on a plate some acetone, and on top of it, the foam cup. It will literally melt, and form a weird kind of clay! Isn’t it cool?

FKP96OOHQQLNSFR.SQUARE2.jpg (130×130)

How fast can a foam cup melt with different amount of acetone?

IV (independent variable): Different amount of acetone.                                                                                                                 DV (dependent variable): How fast the foam cup melts?

Now, try this same thing increasing the amount of acetone.                                                                                                           My Hypothesis was that the foam cup would melt faster as it had more liquid helping it out. And it was true!     We increases the amount of acetone, timed how fast the cup melted, and it was faster each time.

10 millimeters of acetone 15 millimeters of acetone 20 millimeters of acetone
56 seconds for the glass to melt 50 seconds for the glass to melt 40 seconds for the glass to melt

Based on our data, we can conclude that by increasing the amount of acetone, the foam cup will melt faster and easier.

This a chart of our process:                                                                                                                                                                   https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GrnkT9-sd6StQsNPhpFVVAw9GjW7Z-OrBZAJe_rlN9c/edit

How fast would the foam glass melt if we add to the acetone a little bit of water?

IV: Amount of water.                                                                                                                                                                               DV: How fast will the foam cup melt?

Once you have tried this experiment, try to do it again but changing things. Instead of just putting acetone to your plate, add some water to it. Before I did it, my hypothesis was: Water isn’t going to affect the acetone at all, so maybe the acetone will make the foam cup melt slower.

5 ml of acetone & 5 ml of water 10 ml of acetone & 5 ml of water 10 ml of acetone & 1 ml of water
NO reaction NO reaction NO REACTION!

Well, no at all! Even if we added 1 milliliter of water to 10 milliliters of acetone, the foam cup wouldn’t melt! Do you want to know why?: Water has a higher boiling point (100 C) than acetone does, (56 C), due to the hydrogen boiling molecules between them. That’s why!

Based on our data, we can conclude that water is more powerful that acetone when they come together.

This is a chart of our process:                                                                                                                                                               https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WED4YufIOjRlBB-PyqJoqzusRm-IStsuwvirTt80r-E/edit

That’s all of our experiment “Acetone & Water melting a foam cup Experiment.” !

 

 

 

Light vs Dark experiment

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We did an experiment in class based on how fast plants could grow on different types of light.

We putted tree seeds in a plastic little box, in top of a wet cardboard. The first box, we putted it on a place with electric light for 24 hours. The second one, we putted it inside a closet for 24 hour. The last one, we placed it at the window (12 hour light).

My hypothesis was that the tallest plant was going to be the one placed on the window because natural light is the most important light for plants. The second tallest one, I thought it would be the one with electric light because for a plant it is essential the light. And the last one, the one in the dark. “Plants can’t grow without light” I thought.

Here is a table with my results of the experiment:

1st tallest= 24h dark (no light) 2nd tallest= 12h natural light 3th tallest= 24h electric light
20mm tall 9mm tall 0mm tall

1- Isn’t it wierd how the tallest one is the plant in 24 hour light? Well, here is why: Actually, the plant inside the seed was so nervous to come out, that it used all the energy it had for the plant to go out. But if we had kept the plant more our in the closet, it will have died because it had wasted all the energy it had.

2- The second tallest, it’s the plant with natural light, because plants need natural light from the sun.

3- And last, the third plant was the last one because a plant can’t grow with electrical light. It needs to be natural light.