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VIDEO: Campbell River students build catapults to launch pumpkins into the air

To learn about catapults, students build their own

Excited voices mixed with cheering and some groaning at Penfield School Wednesday morning as students launched pumpkins into the air with their homemade catapults.

The students in Penfield’s Grade 4/5 classes learned some engineering skills by making the catapults and using them in the Pumpkin Toss on a frosty morning this week.

“Our Grade 4/5 classes have been doing an inquiry-based project on catapults,” teacher Lisa Luoma said. “They did a little bit of research on how they are constructed and how they worked and they were asked to bring in tools and pieces of wood and different types of equipment to put a catapult together so that they could throw a pumpkin.”

Not all the pumpkins took to the air as gracefully as the builders would have hoped as the various designs worked to varying degrees. For some students, it was an opportunity to learn the meaning behind the old expression, “Back to the drawing board.”


@AlstrT
editor@campbellrivermirror.com

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Student contestants in Penfield School’s Pumpkin Toss prepare to launch one of the gourds into the school’s field on Wednesday. See more on page 14. Photo by Alistair Taylor/Campbell River Mirror Student contestants in Penfield School’s Pumpkin Toss prepare to launch one of the gourds into the school’s field on Wednesday. Photo by Alistair Taylor/Campbell River Mirror
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Left: Penfield teacher Lisa Luoma measured how far the pumpkins flew a tthe school’s pumpkin toss on Wednesday. Photo by Alistair Taylor/Campbell River Mirror