Throw Back Thursday! Gingerbread From 2016

Repost from former students 2016. It's that good!

Gingerbread Mission

By Nolan and Elie

Photo by Mrs. Yollis 

One day, Elie was at Nolan’s house when they saw the mailman. “I’ll get the mail,” announced Nolan.

Strolling to the box, he popped open the lid and saw a flyer for something. The flyer read: “Come to the Gingerbread baking competition! It will be a blast! It is at Marcus Hall on Peach Street at 2:00 P.M. It is on Sunday, June 18th.”

It was Saturday, June 17th. There was no time to waste. Nolan rushed in the house while waving the flyer.

“We should really enter this!” Elie said while reading it. “We are some of the best bakers in town!”

That was true. One time Elie and Nolan entered a cookie baking competition, and the judges were blown away by their creations. They won by using a secret ingredient. The boys were going to use that ingredient for the gingerbread house. They were confident.

“We should start baking right now!” Nolan exclaimed. So, they started planning.

They got a ride to Buck’s Market from Nolan’s mom. At the store, they got the ingredients. Plus Nolan’s mom got some groceries. Back at Nolan’s house, they started baking. Gingerbread and frosting went flying as they baked and baked. Then they put in the secret ingredient. After an hour, Elie said, “I’m tired.”

“Good,” said Nolan. “because we are done!”

“Great! But it will melt if we don’t put it in the refrigerator,” Elie noted.

“Right!” concurred Nolan.

They put the gingerbread house in the refrigerator and they went away. Elie was sleeping over, so they got their sleeping bags unrolled and quickly fell asleep.

The next morning, they were very excited. It was Sunday, June 18th, and it was time to go to the competition. They went to the refrigerator. Then it happened, and they saw it...

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Hour(s) of Code!

This is a post for the Student Blogging Challenge! Let's get coding!

Hour of Code is an annual event to promote Computer Science. According to their website: 

The Hour of Code takes place each year during Computer Science Education Week. The 2018 Computer Science Education Week will be December 3-7, but you can host an Hour of Code all year round. Computer Science Education Week is held annually in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906). 

We're starting Hour of Code and changing the name to Hours of Code!

Thank you, Hadi Partovi for creating this project!

Computer Science week coincides with the birthdays of two computer science pioneers. A pioneer is a person who is one of the first to enter a field of study or explore a new area of thought. 

1. Ada Lovelace, born in England on December 10, 1815, is considered the world's first computer programmer.

Photo Credit


2.  Grace Hopper, whose birthday is December 9, 1906, was an American computer programmer and Navy rear admiral. She contributed to the development of the COBOL language and is credited with popularizing the term "computer bug" in the programming community. 


Grace Hopper said, "To me programming is more than an important practical art. It is also a gigantic undertaking in the foundations of knowledge."

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One of the important things about problem-solving is persevering. Sometimes you try an algorithm, or list of steps used to solve a problem,  and it fails, adjust your algorithm. Try again! This strategy is called trial and error. 




Check out this group below who worked collaboratively to solve a very difficult puzzle. First, they tried to solve it online. The code failed. Next, they tried to write the steps out on paper to look for a loop. That helped, but the code still failed. Finally, Mrs. Yollis gave us a small hint using the solution. That did it. The zombies ate the sunflower!

As a surprise for the class, I booked Mrs. Minnicozzi, our district tech expert, and she taught a robotics class! We applied our Blockly coding to robots!

Mrs. Minnicozzi showed us how to link blocks together on the ipad to make the robots dance.

We worked in small groups to get the bots to boogie.

After the dance competition was over, Mrs. Minnicozzi hit the road with her wagon of bots!

Students, on our Blogger blog, you can use HTML code to level up your comments. Here is some information about HTML code. Here is the HTML code for some fancy shapes. There are many more!

What do you like about coding?

What did you learn about robots from Mrs. Minnicozzi?

What are you creating?