Row, Row, Row Your Boat

Dallin participates in the Gifted & Talented program in the school district. He has ALWAYS enjoyed it. In previous grades it was just an afternoon a week, but now that he is in 6th grade it is an actual class that he gets to get on a bus, ride to a different school to a special classroom/lab. He finds this really cool.

Recently they had been learning about water displacement, Archimedes principle, density. . . things like that. The project that did to help them utilize this new knowledge required them to build a boat. To make the project even MORE exciting, he was only allowed to use a cardboard box and 1 roll of Duct Tape.

Today was the launching; I went to go watch armed with my camera. (Not that you would expect anything less, right?) I must add that we had two BEAUTIFUL days before today; the weather was clear and it was between 70 & 75 degrees. TODAY, it was 48 degrees, cloudy, windy, rainy and the water in the OUTDOOR pool was only 65 degrees. BRRRRRRRR!


This is Dallin and his partner Paytin. I told him he was lucky she was a tiny girl; he could have ended up with one of the heavy football players from his team! That is their boat; number 83. I should remind you that 83 is his football number; it was also his Dad's football number.

Yea! It floats! There were some different constructions, but box-shaped seemed to be a common theme.

They look VERY pleased that it is floating.

HA! It took FOREVER, but I got the video to upload AND embed! Woot! Woot! Enjoy! (Yes, you do hear Tacey yelling. I got her out of class to come watch. Should have probably gotten Mac too. Oh Well. . . . . . )



Dallin got his boat to the other side of the pool; he got extra credit for making his own paddles. When he got to the other side his partner joined him in the boat.

Unfortunately, by then the paddles were almost gone. They really didn't have much of a chance once they could no longer move across the water.

Like the Titanic, the cold water was the un-doing of the boat. Here he is about to abandon ship.

He couldn't jump fast enough.

That's a pretty big hole on the bottom.

He then joined a bunch of kids (5, ALMOST 6!) in another boat. They were seeing how many people they could put in the boat and still have it float!

At first it seemed to go well.

But again, slow sinking proved to be a powerful thing.

In the end, there were kids with hypothermia symptoms, so we pulled them out of the pool as fast as possible. They were having fun, so it wasn't as easy as it sounds! No one died; all boats were eventually in soggy pieces, and the Mom's all had a great laugh! It was a good day!

Danielle