Whatever floats 'yer boat.

A few teachers are working on the Follet Challenge in hopes of winning our school some serious cash to update the library.  The librarian has been working with our ELL teacher and they came up with a "Treasure Island" theme.  As I understand it, Follet is a book / publishing company or something, so they chose a book and are trying to get the entire school involved somehow.  I volunteered to build Raingutter Regatta boats with my Tech class, and we just finished up the unit.

I think it went pretty well, I really wish we would have had more time to tear the boats apart and let them make their own design and go crazy with ideas now that they have a race under their belts and saw what worked and what didn't.  Unfortunately, we only have about 15 good work days left in the school year and have 2 units to try and smash into that time.

Anyways, here are their boats!

Roughing out the hulls.









Primer.



Smoothing out the primer, prepping for paint.



Paint!



Oooooo, shinnnnnyyyyy....



Getting closer.



Two that I made as demo's.



RACE DAY!









Think they had fun and learned a fair bit about boating and some of the design challenges associated with them.  Had a few boats capsize, a few with sail issues, and a few with hulls that just didn't want to float right.  The ELL class came and judged the races for us and also gave out a few awards for different categories. 

Many thanks to Greg of All Seasons Continuous Rain Gutters and Siding for building and donating the "race track"!  If you are in SE Idaho and need gutters or siding, be sure to give him a call-  208-785-2259!

FIFTEEN MORE DAYS.  Am I going to survive this!?