Academic Talent Search

Cody spent a week at Sacramento State for the ATS again this summer.  This year he chose a bridge engineering class.  The course was 6 days over 3 weeks, moving up to the 6-9th grade group.  

Over the course of the class, they learned about budgeting for a project and how things can change, how to work with a group and design elements.  

 Their bridge held the most weight overall and had the best ratio for how much their bridge weighed to how much it could hold.  They were allowed to put weight in the bucket until the bridge became impassible by a car.  (If life size, a car would lose a bumper, fall off, etc.)

 

They experimented with how much weight it could hold before breaking, but the bucket ended up hitting the floor and it never actually broke.   

Another successful ATS in the books. 

Organizing

There have been small bursts of getting things done this summer.  Very small bursts....

It started with needing to organize this mess and hopefully make more space around the table.  

We had this storage cube system in pieces, so some Gorilla Glue later, it was set up.  

Then I took foam board and covered it with shelf paper so that it made it easier to store things on it. 

Everything in it's new place 

Cute new bookends for the cookbooks

  Now the table is straight and has more room if we have company.

 The next project was to clean up the entry way.  

A trip to Ikea brought us a new shoe rack with a bench top and some new hooks for the wall. 

 New hooks behind the door for the extra bags. 

 Much cleaner

(Guardian BSU door gnome)

 

The toys and books were next on the list.  We still had most of the little kid books on the boys' shelves in their room, so it was time to find a place for them out front.  Walmart to the rescue for this new shelf and the bins.  A few more toys were also brought out of the toy room for the littles to play with. 

 

This also meant I was able to finally fix Tyler's bookshelf that had the back fall off, which gave it a disconcerting lean.   Now all is level and their books have more space.