Hello everyone!
NH-DI is publishing a regular newsletter for families, which we hope will be full of educational resources and inspiration during this challenging time.
To view previous issues, head here.
Chalk Comic Challenge
This week, we challenge you to create a chalk comic!
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Open in new tab Shout out to volunteer Rachel Turek Sullivan for creating this exciting challenge!
Your mission this week, should you choose to accept it…
Mission 1: Your mission is to create a sentence in which the letters of the words add up to EXACTLY 200 points! On a sheet of paper setup your point chart: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3… Z = 26. Now, write a short sentence and add up your letter points. Using a calculator makes it easier to check the total number of points! It’s not so easy! And do recheck your letter count before you declare “Mission accomplished!” Example: Witch (63) Val (35) wants (77) a (1) cat (24) – Total letter points = 200. Challenge your family to see if they can produce a 200 point sentence!
Mission 2: Your mission is to set up a blind taste test to see which brand of tortilla chip your family likes the most!
- Step 1: Ask a grown-up to buy several different brands of chips for your experiment—say please!
- Step 2: You will need the same number of paper lunch bags as chip brands for your taste test. Write a number on each bag and make a key for yourself as you fill the bags with the number of the bag and chip brand in each. For example: Bag 1 (contains Tastee Chips), Bag 2 (contains Crunch-O Chips), etc.
- Step 3: Supply each taster with a sheet of paper with the bag numbers written down the left side of the page.
- Step 4: Place your bags around a table.
- Step 5: Each taster takes a chip from one bag at a time and rates that chip by assigning it an emoji face and drawing it next to the corresponding bag number.
Example of Emoji Scoring:
= 5 PTS 
= 4 PTS 
= 3 PTS 
= 2 PTS 
= 1 PT
Mission 3: Your mission is to test your observational memory! Take the quiz below by answering True or False to each statement. Then, you must verify your answers. How accurate are your powers of observation?
- Lincoln’s head on a penny faces right.
- The letter B is located between Z and V on your keyboard.
- Page 94 of a book is located on the left side.
- There are horizontal stripes on a zebra’s legs.
- If you roll a dice and see 2 dots, 4 dots are on the bottom side.
- There are six rings on the Olympic Games symbol.
- The top stripe on the American flag is red.
- The doorknob on your bedroom door is on the right.
- President Trump parts his hair on the left.
- The top color on a traffic light is green.
Mission 4: Your mission is to select a bedtime story for a sibling or friend and make a sock puppet to read the book with you! Consider making the puppet one of the characters in the book. For tons of ideas on sock puppets, check out this link!
Mission 5: Your mission is to make a water timer! Materials: 5 styrofoam cups, 5 pushpins, a sharp pencil, enough water to fill one styrofoam cup, a round jar/container, 3 rubber bands, and a timer.
- Step 1: Make a small hole in the bottom of each cup from the inside with the tip of your pencil.
- Step 2: Pushpin your 5 cups into a vertical line, so that each cup is directly below the one above it. You could attach the cups to a tree or to the corner of your house (Ask an adult first!) Place the jar/container on the ground directly below the final cup.
- Step 3: Fill the top cup with water and immediately start your timer. The size of your holes will determine how quickly the water reaches the final container…
- Step 4: If the container is still filling at 1 minute, quickly place your rubber band around the jar/container at the 1 minute water level! If there is still lots more water dripping, you may also be able to mark the 3 minute level and the 5 minute level, if it is really slow! (Note: If you put a larger container that holds more water in place of the top cup, you can make a water clock that measures a longer period of time!)
- Step 5: Check your results by re-adding water to your top container and use your timer to make sure the container/jar is correctly marked. Use your water timer to keep track of the time when you have 5 minutes before dinner!
Answer to Mission 1 from May 25: The next letter in the sequence is 3! This sequence has nothing to do with number patterns. It is all about the spelling of the numbers. The number words have been sequenced in alphabetical order: Eight, Five, Four, Nine, One, Seven, Six, and Three! Did you get it?
Thanks to NH-DI volunteer Jill Schoonmaker for continuing to keep us inspired with these missions!
Some STEAM activities to try
Bottled music
Learn how to make a musical instrument using glass bottles filled with water.
Construct a pop-up landscape
Turn flat pieces of paper into a 3D landscape with some glue, scissors, and crayons.
Candle Carousel
Have you ever ridden on a carousel, or a merry-go-round, at an amusement park? On a carousel, you usually get to take a seat on a wooden horse or other animal that spins around and around as the carousel is turned on and powered by electricity. Another smaller type of carousel that people can have in their homes is a candle carousel, which is powered by heat from candles. In this science project, you will get to make your own candle carousel and investigate how the spinning speed of the carousel is related to the number of candles you use to power it.
Balloon-Powered Car Challenge
Do you think you could build a car powered by nothing but air? A balloon-powered car is pushed forward by air escaping from a balloon, and it is fun and easy to build with materials you already have around your house. Can you imagine how you would want your own balloon-powered car to look? Can you design a car that will travel as far as possible?
Challenges created by DI headquarters
Virtual Instant Challenge: Take a Hike
For this week’s Virtual Instant Challenge, we’re heading outdoors for an alphabet scavenger hunt! Students will find and take photos of as many letters of the alphabet in nature as possible and challenge their friends or family members to do the same. Once they complete the challenge, continue the fun by having them print some of their photos to create a piece of art.
From our friends at Camp Gottalikachallenge
Peanut butter cups with Queen Lou
Share what you’ve created!
Were you inspired by any of the activities or resources in this Weekly Roundup? What did you build or create? We encourage you, with a parent or guardian’s help and permission, to share your creations on our Facebook or Instagram pages! (Just add your photo as a comment on our weekly post!)
And please share NH-DI’s Weekly Roundup with your friends! Ask them to sign up for weekly emails (if they’re 13 or older), or send them a link to our main Weekly Roundup page.
That’s all for this week, but we look forward to sending you more soon! And as always, if you have ideas for the Weekly Roundup, email Emily Richardson at emily.richardson@nh-di.org.
Published weekly by New Hampshire Innovation and Creativity Connection (NHICC), the nonprofit organization that operates New Hampshire’s Destination Imagination, Camp Gottalikachallenge, and Girls Engineering the Future programs. Learn more about us…