by Sarah
3rd-5th Grade, Unity Elementary School (Luthersville, GA)
Honorable Mention
Once there was a 10 year old girl named Savannah with her friend’s Abi, Sarah, and Brielle. They went up to Savannah’s treehouse out in the woods. They thought it would be a good idea to play hide and go seek. Sarah hid under a blanket, Abi hid under a large clothes basket, and Brielle hid behind a stack of leftover wood from the treehouse. When Savannah said “Ready or not, here I come!”,she went looking for everyone, She found Sarah first, then Abi, but Brielle managed to sneak out and ran towards base. She tripped over a piece of wood and fell, hurting her ankle and her arm. She was crying in pain and the girls didn’t know what to do. They knew they would not be able to carry Brielle down the narrow treehouse ladder, so they covered her with a blanket and tried to figure out what to do next.
Savannah remembered something she learned in science class and said that they should build something to get Brielle down from the treehouse. Savannah wants to be a mechanical engineer when she grows up. She told everyone to look around and see what they can find that may help to build something to get Brielle down, out of the tree. Abi said, “how about the basket that I hid under?”, Sarah found some rope. Savannah threw the rope over a sturdy tree limb and ran one end of the rope through the handles of the laundry basket and tied a knot back up to the rope to secure it. Savannah knew it was best to test this with something heavy to make sure it would work, because they didn’t want Brielle to get hurt any worse. They put a bunch of wood in the basket, Sarah and Abi pulled the rope while Savannah helped to guide it and keep it from hitting anything on the way down. It was really heavy and hard for them to handle and they knew that Brielle weighed more than the wood. They had to find something better, but what?
Savannah untied the rope and told the girls that they needed something round to make a pulley with. All of the girls started looking around really fast trying to find something. Sarah found a big wooden spool. Savannah used a pocket knife to get the small branches off of the tree limb. She slid the spool over the limb. They were afraid it would slide on the limb so she cut off two pieces of rope and tied a knot on each side of the spool to keep it from moving. She ran the rest of the rope over the spool making a pulley and ran the rope through the handles of the clothes basket again and tied it back up the rope to secure it again. Abi remembered that it was best to test their idea to make sure it would work. It was much easier to lower the wood down in the basket this time.
Now for the real test. Savannah, Sarah, and Abi all carefully lifted Brielle into the basket. She was in a lot of pain and could not stand on her hurt foot. Savannah carefully guided the basket as Abi and Sarah slowly lowered it down to the ground. The treehouse elevator worked! The girls helped Brielle onto the back of Savannah’s bike and they headed to Brielle’s house. They told her mom what had happened and her mom took her to the doctor who said she had broken her ankle, but had only bruised her arm. Brielle had to get a cast, and she wanted it to be pink. Brielle was so thankful for her friends for saving the day and getting her out of the treehouse. She let all of them sign her cast. Everyone signed their name and after Savannah signed her name she wrote engineer girls save the day.
