Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - Final Day - SF Day Camp
The storm we've all been waiting for has finally arrived! Soon everyone's hunger will be satiated as watermelons, doughnuts and pizza rain down on our workshop. With no time to lose, our crews jumped into putting the final touches on their projects.
Our catapult team experienced an exciting structural failure when trying to move the catapult into the adjacent room. With the weight of the catapult and several builders on the moving platform, the side rail was no match for the force on the wheel's axle. Our tinkerers proudly met the Tinkering School goal of "making mistakes and learning from them" :)
The catapult required so much force to pull the lever that a pad was needed for the puller to fall back on.
Meanwhile our mouth team worked hard on the track of the digestive tract tunnel.
After giving the giant mouth giant teeth, all that was needed were giant lips! This group easily met the Tinkering School goal of "build something bigger than ourselves."
And it was finally time to decorate our huge food cloud. It was a full team effort to dress it up in white cloth. There was also enough time to also complete the trap door mechanism.
And then...dun dun dun...!!!!!
Parents and grandparents arrived to witness an epic food storm. After a brief safety discussion, it was time to see the giant cloud full of food raise off the floor and into the sky. The humidity levels went up (mostly due to Tinkering staff hoisting the heavy cloud on pulleys) and up went our giant cloud amidst lots of cheering!
As we soon discovered, the volume of food was so great that as soon as the cloud raised off the ground, the trap door gave way and spilled the food onto the ground. Our cloud appeared to want to be more of a cornucopia than a cumulonimbus.
After emptying itself, our cloud hung around for a bit. At over 8ft tall and 8ft wide, it was an impressive sight to behold.
Next up, it was time to feed our giant mouth by launching our recently harvested food via catapult!
5...4...3... Everyone yelled the countdown!
The giant mouth open and closed in anticipation of a delicious meal!
...2...1... GO!
Aiden pulled hard on the cord, then he pulled harder, and then he pulled as hard as could and still the catapult lever didn't budge... Then we had one of our oldest tinkerers pull the cord and still no luck! We discovered though that with a little nudge of the lever while someone else pulled the the cord, the catapult would let loose and do its job. FOOD AWAY!
Our first watermelon didn't quite make it into the mouth, but after moving the catapult closer, the giant mouth was finally satisfied - along with our dedicated and excited group of tinkerers!
What a week! And it was all made possible by all of our tinkerers collaborating and working together, and trying harder than usual. These are two more of our Tinkering School goals and it was a pleasure to watch this crew take them on whole heartedly. I have no doubt these kids will be creating and building many more awesome and imaginative creations in the near future. Happy munching!
To check out all the action from the week, be sure to visit our Flickr page!