Making Kite Connections

Last week began with some kite reflection.It was awesome to see how many opportunities for iteration everyone had leading up to our big test flight on Bernal Hill.We decided to build on our kite math to create two dueling dragon kites—one fire dragon for Amber Band and a water dragon for Indigo Band! We talked about the importance of having a failure positive attitude to help us iterate on our designs, while also being conservative with our materials so we didn't produce too much waste. Understanding how to calculate surface area really helped us cut down on the amount of waste we produced in building our kite.Last week we also started reading Laurence Yep's historical novel Dragonwings. The book is inspired by the stories of a Chinese immigrant who made a flying machine in 1909, and portrays the rich traditions of the San Francisco Chinatown community that formed during this difficult time. As we read the book we're practicing how to record important details, analyze the big idea of each chapter, and highlighting any new words. Students recreated tableaus from each chapter on Friday to act out important scenes from each chapter so far.Next week we'll continue to build on our math skills by working with geometric solids. Will we design air-chairs for our upstairs band space? Will we make a hot air balloon to transport precious cargo? Will we build an air-supported geodesic dome? Anything is possible!We'll also continue to read Dragonwings, and to help learn more about Chinese culture while we do, we'll get the chance to interview students in Hong Kong. Because of the 15 hour time difference, we'll be doing our interview through a few back and forth video messages for now. We've also talked about possibly having a late-night Skype session at Brightworks to be able to talk to the students in Hong Kong when it's daytime for them.I'm looking forward to seeing all the ways we continue to explore the movement of things by air in these last few weeks of the first Arc!