The Snow Fort by Ty Pastore Whew! Finally, we had made it outside! Even as I stepped out into the freezing cold air, I felt great. The air was cold, but the excitement that I felt inside me was greater. “Snow fort! Let’s build a snow fort,” someone from the back of the line yelled. I was all for making a giant snow fort. One of my classmates (Nicolas Dow) had brought a snow molding brick to school. He actually had brought three. Before we had gone out on the playground, Nick had handed both Robert Sprung and me one of his snow molding bricks. He gave the third
Winter 2011
Brunswick Beacon Scent Tracking in Science Class
one to himself. Outside, about five minutes after we had started building the Snow Fort, my friend Ryan Glanville came up to me. (He came up to me because I was the one putting the Snow Fort together while the other kids filled up the snow molders. I had set my snow molder on the ground, because I had no use for it. I was busy improving the designs and adding to the snow bricks the guys had given me. I had a lot of improving to do, because about half of the bricks the guys gave me had big chunks of ice in them and the snow bricks were unstable.) Then he said “Hey Ty. Can I help you build your snow fort?” I hesitated for a moment, and then I said “Sure, Ryan. Go take the snow molder over there and get to work.” Then I pointed to where my snow molder was and he got right work. He was as fast as a machine! He could make a new brick in about a minute! I ran back in forth, collecting bricks, adding them to the fort, running back to the person who gave it to me, and then running back to the fort to improve the bricks making. Even in the cold, I was sweating. As I looked down at the fort, I saw that it was slowly coming together. I had made the first row of bricks. If you stood up in the fort, you would be completely protected foot and down! “Wait a second.” I thought to myself. “Foot down is not that much protection. We have to start making the second row on brick. The bricks would go right on top of each other, and form a high wall.” I looked around for my friends making the fort with me. “Hey guys! Congratulations! We have made it to our second row of bricks,” The guys came running to look at our fort so far. “That’s some serious progress,” Nick said.“Hmmmm,” Ryan said. “Doesn’t look like much of a fort to me.” “It’s something,” Matthew Goodman said. As the guys congratulated themselves, I told thm to stop being so happy and to get back to work. They agreed. As I counted the people who were building this fort, I counted five. The other ten people were making a snow couch. The other three were having a snowball fight. As I watched the ten people who wer building the fort, I almost laughed out loud. “Hey,” said Joshua Johnson. “I wonder if this thing can hold me up.” “No,” Mclain Kingery said. But it was too late. Josh had stood on the couch. It crumpled beneath his feet. Suddenly, I heard a voice saying SNOW BRICK! SNOW BRICK I turned around and saw Ryan smiling at me. He handed me the snow brick maker and I made the brick. I handed it back to him. He and the other boys were just coming with a brand new snow brick from each of them (that’s three snow bricks) but just then the teacher yelled LINE UP! 3 T/F! I took a final glance at the Snow Fort. We had only made three rows of wall, but it was still great.
Third graders learned how animals use their sense of smell in the snow with Mr. Martell.
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