We hiked up Passage Creek Falls trail with the Bishops. There was construction on the way there. There was a new bridge. Laurie liked the flowers. There were lots of raspberries on the trail. Quint, Peter, and Simon built a dam at lunchtime. Leslie and Zoe made clay sand. We crossed some creeks. There were burnt trees. There was a steep turny trail. We were hiding a geocache at the falls. Once we were at the falls, there was lightning, thunder, and hail. We hid our geocache in a hole in a tree at the falls. There were bubbles in the geocache. The hike was was very fun.

At twelve o’clock Leslie, Peter, Ciara, and Beth went apple picking. Ciara attacked Peter with tons of make-up on the way there. If there was a blue ribbon on the apple tree, you could pick the apples. If there was orange or green ribbon on a tree then you could not pick the apples. We took took all but two buckets. We visited every tree. There were about fifty trees there. Beth shook all the apples out of the trees with a shaking stick. We filled up eleven buckets with apples. We will get 36 half gallons of apple cider. It was a very hot and sunny day. We were sweaty afterwards.

By Peter and Leslie

Preface by John… We’re reading the classic Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire; and then we’re writing about it.

by Peter

This is a story of Zeus and Typhon having a big fight! Typhon is a big monster with 100 heads; and he drools lava from his mouths. At the battle the two threw mountains at each other. Zeus hit one of the mountains with 100 lightning bolts. Typhon was pinned by the mountain and never seen again.

by Leslie

This is the story of Zeus being saved. Cronus ate his five babies. They were alive in his stomach. Rhea dressed a stone in baby clothes to trick Cronus. Cronus didn’t eat Zeus.

Preface by John… Leslie’s Birthday Party was a little while ago; but today is the first day of school; and today’s writing assignment harkens back to last week’s party.

by Leslie

We face painted at my birthday party. Peter was a skeleton. Zoe was a barbie. We tackled John. The paint was hard to get off.

by Peter

We decorated boxes at Leslie’s birthday party. Peter thought it went by pretty fast. Some kids didn’t notice that there were little hinges. There were little flowers on the boxes. It was fun.

by John

There was a treasure hunt at Leslie’s birthday party. Leslie’s dad made the treasure hunt. There were six different clues printed on pink cards. The treasure was hidden in a Bar-b-que pit.It was a bag full of ice cream coupons. Everybody was excited; and everybody had a good time.

Here’s the video from the last race on Nov 6.

The challenge: Build something that crawls… they built, they programmed, they tested… they re-designed, they rebuilt, they reprogrammed, they retested…. for hours.

We built Spike, we programmed Spike. Spike striked! Now Peter is dead… bummer.

We met, we built, we programmed, we played. The challenge: program your tribot to drive from the starting strip, knock down the blocks, and then drive through the gate.

Alpha Rex is looking good. We just built it yesterday; and we have barely begun to program it. We reget that we have but one week to give to our robot.

Here’s another angle on the tribot running a slightly different program.