NaNoWriMo
It's the first week of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), and the Amber Band is digging in! NaNoWriMo has become a rich tradition at Brightworks. For some of the Amber Band though, myself included, participating in NaNoWriMo is new territory. To help us get into the writing zone, we've decided to transform our upstairs band space into a cozy writing nook.
We wanted a creative space for each of us to work on our daily NaNoWriMo goals, and so we brainstormed what we might need to do to transform the space. Teams quickly formed to tackle building a roof to reduce sound, curtains to block out light, furniture to sit on, and a mural to inspire creativity. Students created scale drawings of our band space to map out plans before we jumped right into building.
Then each team had to tackle problems involving volume, and surface area. What's the surface area of the wood panel for our mural, and how much paint will we need to buy to cover it? How big can we build the chairs, given the volume of our space? 
Designing a modular roof was very tricky, and we're still working on it. The team wanted to use cardboard as our roofing material, but we couldn't find any panels that were the exact size of our roof area. We worked through this constraint by designing tiles for the roof. To help determine how many tiles, and what size to cut them, the roofing team had to identify factor pairs of the roof size. What's the largest size tile piece we can cut from the cardboard sheets we bought, and how many cardboard sheets will it take to cover our roof?
Of course, we also took time this week to set our NaNoWriMo goals, analyze stories, and write! Each student set a personal goal for how they'll be using their time during NaNoWriMo, and we're working together to help one another through this journey. Some students experimented with using The Most Dangerous Writing App to help with this. The app is designed to encourage writers to just keep writing, and if they don't, the app deletes their text. We'll have all of December to edit our work, but for now students are encouraged to turn off their inner editor.
Redesigning our upstairs bandspace into a cozy writing nook got our band thinking about shelter and home. We talked about how people seek out shelter as they move by land. Next week we'll explore what causes people to move by land, and the effect that movement can have.