Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook It’s a big day today. The astronauts are getting close to one of the most dangerous parts of the mission — landing on Mars. It may sound easy peasy lemon squeezy to land on Mars, but it’s not because the astronauts are cruising along at 12,300 miles per hour! That’s

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook We’ve just hit a big STOP Sign! Our telescopes and smellescopes have picked up a giant dust storm on Mars. It’s the trolls. Instead of landing gently on Mars, they smashed right into a big, red dust dune and kicked up a massive dust storm, which means that our astronauts

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook I want you to imagine that you’re on Mars. The air around you is so thin it’s unbreathable. How do your lungs feel? So far, you’ve enjoyed the mild 70 degree day, but now it’s nighttime and -120 degrees. What does that feel like on your skin? Now you’re standing

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook Water and signs of potential alien life have been discovered on Mars! Space agencies all over the world are scrambling to get there first. But what’s this?! The three notorious trolls have gotten themselves a rocket too! The Blame, Complain, and Give-Up Trolls!!! Captain Smith sends his thanks for the

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook Disaster in orbit! On their way out of Earth’s atmosphere, the astronauts were sabotaged by the notorious trolls, who nearly knocked them out of orbit. The captain was able to regain control of their rocket ship, but his crew began to argue with each other. They started blaming (“Oh man!

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook Mars — our closest planetary neighbor. For thousands of years, astronomers have dreamt of reaching the “red planet,” but never have been able to… until now. NASA is working on getting a crew ready to make the treacherous journey, but they’ll need our help to escape Earth’s gravity, survive the

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook The mayor just shared an amazing secret with me. It seems the traffic jam trolls never really go away. They will strike every day, if we let them. Whenever we find ourselves blaming, complaining, or giving up, it’s because a troll has struck! But we have a super power. We

Challenge and Constraints Challenge and Constraint We have a huge Stop Sign today. Platinum Patroller wants to sleep on the top bunk. We’ve got to use the architectural techniques we’ve learned to build the bunkbed strong enough to hold his incredible weight without turning Arachnikid into a pancake. Materials You may also provide these optional

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook You’re probably wondering what happened to my office. All of the villains — Evil Egghead, Sir Ion, and Magnidude — have teamed up to create a truly evil machine: The Troll-Flinger 5000. They just used it to launch the trolls into my office, and they’ve been using it to destroy

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook I’m taking cover because we’re being attacked by a super villain. His name is Magnadude, and he’s been causing earthquakes deep under the ground all day. And it gets worse! The three traffic-jam trolls are with him — Blame Troll, Complain Troll, and Give-Up Troll! These trolls are nasty. They

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook Welcome to New York, home to some of the tallest buildings in the world — skyscrapers! It’s also the home of the newest resident of Superhero Metropolis, Arachnikid. She uses strong, stretchy strands of bubblegum to swing from skyscraper to skyscraper and catch bad guys on the run. But when

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook The Platinum Patroller just moved into town. He’s a guy cool — he wears a cool suit made of platinum and flies around fighting bad guys. As he was doing that yesterday, he landed on one of our bridges, and it collapsed into the water, leaving him soaked. He was

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook A super villain named Sir Ion, who can control metal with his mind, has destroyed all but one of the bridges in Superhero Metropolis. He accidentally sat on a bowl of chocolate pudding, and when people started laughing at him, he got extremely upset, destroying all the metal bridges in

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints Hook The Amazing Brainiac has a new roommate, the Incorrigible Sulk. She’s a superhero with super strength as well as a great friend, but she gets upset easily and whenever that happens, she tends to destroy everything! When she went to the ice cream shop to get some mint chocolate chip

Hook, Challenge, and Constraints  Hook The Amazing Brainiac is the world’s smartest superhero who can predict crime before it happens. She has been getting picked on by an evil supergenius, Egghead, who just built himself a cool, secret lair that’s really tall and fancy. Now he’s making fun of Brainiac’s old, dusty hideout that

Challenge and Constraints Our first mission comes from Madame Amazonia. She’s a superhero that speaks with animals and teams up with them to save the environment. She needs us to make some animal sidekicks for her. She has requested that we only make animals that have legs that can stand on their own, so no