1. EXT. elinor’s windowsill (TIGHT) – DAY Open on an extremely close view of scurrying ANTS, carrying twigs, leaf bits, and dirt in a long line. We hear ELINOR narrating what she thinks the ants are saying, using a different cute voice for each ant. Elinor (V.O.) (s cute ant’s voice)) I can’t wait to build this anthill! Come on, you guys! Another ant scurries into view, following the first. ELINOR (V.O.) (another ant’s voice) Stay in line, everyone! As the first two ants crawl off-screen, a third appears, lugging a giant leaf piece with some difficulty. ELINOR (v.O.) (third ant’s voice) ( grunting ) This leaf is too heavy for me. Another ant enters and grabs the other side of the leaf. ELINOR (V.O.) (a low cute ant’s voice) Then I’ll help you carry it! The two ants begin to carry the leaf. 2. INT. elinor’s living room - conTINUOUS The camera pulls back to reveal that the ants are on the outside of the windowsill, and then we see Elinor, resting on her elbows and staring at the ants. She has been narrating their thoughts all along, and she giggles at the silliness of it. ANGLE ON: HAZEL and ARI enter the room, each carrying a comically tall stack of pillows and cushions. Elinor is so absorbed in the ants that she doesn’t notice. Hazel drops her cushions in a pile in front of her. <SFX: Plop!> hazel Here they are, Elinor! Every cushion and pillow in your house! Ari, nearly invisible behind his tall stack, falls and drops everything onto his head. He pops up from inside the pile. ari Not to mention most of the blankets. ELINOR, HAZEL, ARI (Laugh) ArI Is this is enough to build our couch cushion castle? ELINOR Whoops! I was so busy watching the ants out the window that I almost forgot about our castle. ANGLE ON: During the next lines of dialogue, ELINOR removes the cushions from the living room couch and stacks them next to Hazel’s. Elinor (CONT’D) I have SO many ideas! The view of the living room widens to make room for ELINOR’s THOUGHT BUBBLE, which appears next to her, filled with drawings of her plans in red crayon as she describes them. ELINOR (CONT’D) It’s going to have a slide, and a telescope, and a big window for ant-watching! Hazel walks by balancing a pillow on her head. HAZEL I’ve got some ideas, too! HAZEL’S THOUGHT BUBBLE appears, crowding out ELINOR’s. It fills with drawings of what HAZEL describes, this time outlined in green crayon. HAZEL (CONT’D) I want a room for my crayons, a room for my sparkles, and a GIANT BOOK ROOM! ELINOR You mean a library? hAZEL (excited) Yes! My very own LIBRARY! The excitement is building for all of them, and ARI starts jumping from cushion to cushion. aRI My turn! My turn! ARI’S THOUGHT BUBBLE appears and crowds out HAZEL’s, with his favorite design choices appearing in blue crayon. aRI (CONT’D) I want a drawbridge! A racetrack! And a BUBBLE FOUNTAIN! He says this last line with such gusto that he loses his balance on the cushion on which he’s standing, and topples off, landing on a pile of more cushions. All three THOUGHT BUBBLE BURST! ELINOR Let’s! Start! Building! We see a series of shots of the three kids building their castles; <MFX: FORT BUILDING MUSIC>. ANGLE ON: Elinor balances cushions by the window, then peeks to confirm she can still see the ants from the cozy nook she’s created. ANGLE ON: Ari drapes a blanket between two end tables and smiles at his new cave. ANGLE ON: Hazel lines up books on top of a cushion to make a bookshelf, then holds them in place with her hands while adding another cushion to the top with her trunk. ANGLE ON: Ari stands up a cushion to make a wall next to his table-cave. But when he turns his back to grab another pillow, Elinor takes the pillow he had just stood up. ari Uh, Elinor? You just took my wall. ELINOR Oh! Sorry! She returns the pillow, somewhat regretfully. Ari smiles at his restored wall, then turns to pick up a cushion triple the size of all the others. (It had been in the living room the whole time and was not one of the ones that he and Hazel carried earlier.) ARI And now to use the biggest cushion of all: the drawbridge for Castle Ari! Ari struggles to lift the cushion, but he can’t, and he loses his grip and falls backwards. ARI (CONT’D) (disappointed) Uh-oh! It’s too heavy. ANGLE ON: Elinor balances a cushion to make a slide, but the moment her back is turned, Hazel takes it. Elinor notices. ELINOR Hazel, that’s supposed to be my slide. Elinor puts her hands on the cushion, but Hazel keeps holding it. HAZEL But it’s the perfect shape for the wall of my crayon room. Hazel gives the pillow a small tug, not mean-spiritedly, but she’s clearly disappointed that she can’t build her castle as planned. But Elinor doesn’t let go. Ari pops up in the middle of his friends. aRI You guys, let’s not fight over the pillows. Just then ELINOR loses her grip, and the pillow hits ARI in gently in the chest and knocks him into a pillow. ARI (CONT’D) Whoops! Elinor and Hazel look concerned for a beat, Ari jumps smiling. ARI (CONT’D) I’m okay, and I’ve changed my mind! Let’s fight over the pillows!!! Elinor/hazel/Ari PILLOW FIGHT! The three kids playfully (and safely) bonk each other with pillows, giggling all the while. ElINOR, HAZEL, ARI (giggling wildly, ad lib) Gotcha / Whoo-hoo / Take that! This continues for a few seconds, and no one is hit in the head. However, some of the pillows they grab for the fight had been support structures for their castles. When the fight is over, the kids collapse, laughing, with HAZEL and ARI on the floor and Elinor atop a pile of pillows. ElINOR, HAZEL, ARI (CONT’D) (laughter winds down) HAZEL That was fun! Ari sits up and looks around - their castle is now just a pile of pillows. ARI Yeah. But we totally knocked down our castles! haZEL I couldn’t finish mine anyway. You two were using the cushions I needed. aRI Neither could I! YOU two were using the cushions I needed. PAN OUT TO: ELINOR isn’t listening. She’s back in her original pose, gazing at the ants out the window. HAZEL and ARI notice. HAZEL Elinor? What are you doing? ari Are you looking at the ants again? ANGLE ON: Elinor stares at the ants as before, with Hazel and ARI in the background. eLINOR Yes. They’re building. ari Huh? Ari and Hazel come closer to the windowsill. eLINOR They’re carrying things to build an anthill. Just like we tried to build our castles. HAZEL Yeah, but they’re not having problems like we did. CLOSE UP: ELinor’s face, staring in fascination at the ants. eLINOR You’re right! That is SO INTERESTING. I wonder why. Suddenly she springs up and runs toward the back door, grabbing a magnifying glass on the way out. ELINOR (CONT’D) We need more observations. Come on! Ari and Hazel share a shrug, then follow Elinor out the door. Hazel grabs a note pad and pencil on her way out. (This isn’t the first time she’s followed an excited Elinor into the woods, and she knows it’s useful to have these.) 3. EXT. ELINOR’S YARD - CONTINUOUS CU: The ants busily transport useful bits down their line. Behind them, we see ELINOR running up, her face peering over their ranks. ARI and HAZEL soon join her. ANGLE ON: The three kids studying the line of ants. It’s a long, long line! ELINOR, HAZEL, ARI (ad lib) Whoa!/Wow!/There are so many! They look down the line of ants until they see the nest, which is huge: a conical anthill made of bits of dirt, with occasional leaf litter and twigs. This may require a camera angle from an ant’s viewpoint to convey the relative hugeness. HaZEL Look at the size of that anthill! ARI It’s huge! eLINOR How can those tiny ants build such a big hill? ARI Yeah, and why do they even need one? ANGLE ON: Ari examines the anthill with the magnifying glass. ARI (CONT’D) I mean, what’s going on in there? BACK TO the view of all three kids. hAZEL Wait! That’s what one of my books was about! Hazel runs back into the house to retrieve the book. CU: While they wait, Elinor and Ari study the ants entering and leaving the anthill. Elinor resumes her ant-narration voice. eLINOR (ant voice) I don’t even know what a book is! I’m just a tiny ant. Having heard her ant voice for the first time, Ari giggles. aRI (trying out his own ant voice) Hello, tiny ant! That must make me a tiny uncle. They laugh, while Hazel returns behind them with the book. hAZEL Got it! Look what was on my bookshelf! Well, what’s left of my bookshelf after it collapsed. HAZEL holds up a book with BIG PICTURE OF AN ANTHILL Hazel (CONT’D) It’s a book about life inside an anthill! ANIMATED STORYBOOK ILLUSTRATION: We pan around a simply animated cutaway of an anthill, showing the various chambers as Hazel narrates. The illustrations are deliberately anthropomorphic and cute: nurse ants tending little pupae, ants snoozing in tiny ant beds, ants removing foods from an ant pantry. HAZEL (V.O.) The Anthill is a big place! Ants have rooms for storing their eggs, raising their babies, sleeping, storing their food, and even special places for dumping garbage. And it’s all connected by tunnels! BACK TO the three kids staring at the anthill. ELINOR Wow! But I can’t see any of those things. hAZEL That’s because it’s all happening inside the anthill, underground. It’s kind of like we’re looking down at the roof. aRI Yeah, but like a roof with a door in it. CU: The anthill, where an ant pokes itself out the top of the opening. Then a large stick (large to the ant) is placed gently next to the ant, which regards it curiously. Zoom out to see that Elinor is holding the stick, smiling, trying to entice the ant to crawl on it. The ant does, then runs off, which makes Elinor giggle. eLINOR But I still don’t understand how an ant this small can make something so big as this anthill! aRI Yeah, especially when WE can’t even build a house out of pillows. And we’re BIG! HaZEL (flipping through the book) Hmm. I’m not sure. eLINOR Then let’s see if we can figure it out! We need MORE OBSERVATIONS. They all lie down, elbows on the ground, to observe. ANGLE ON: the ant line in the foreground with the kids in the background. We see what Elinor was watching at the beginning: ants scurrying busily, many of them carrying bits of leaves, sticks, etc. eLINOR (CONT’D) Well, they’re all moving in a line toward the anthill. hAZEL Actually, some are moving toward the anthill, but others are walking away from it. ARI Oh! The ants are leaving to get things, and then they’re bringing them back. hAZEL Like when we got all the cushions from around Elinor’s house and brought them to one place. CU: An ant enters carrying a giant leaf. It’s larger than anything they’ve seen the ants moving so far. eLINOR Whoa! That leaf is way bigger than the ant that’s carrying it! That must be the strongest ant ever! In the background, behind the ants, we see ARI lowering his face to provide a silly ant-narration. ArI (macho ant voice) Hey, don’t worry about it, guys. I got this. ANGLE ON: The kids laugh. ELINOR/hazel (laugh) eLINOR Huh. So maybe THAT’s how they do it. The ants are super strong, so even though they’re little, they can build something big. Hazel opens her book. hAZEL (reading) You’re right! Ants are so strong that they can carry things that weigh ten times more than they do! Hazel looks up from the book. Her THOUGHT BUBBLE appears to illustrate the following. hAZEL (CONT’D) Whoa. That would be like me picking up a car! Ari’s THOUGHT BUBBLE appears next to hers. ArI Or me picking up ten Aris ! In Ari’s thought bubble, he muscularly holds up ten Aris. ArI (CONT’D) Just think of the castle I could make if there were TEN of me! Elinor’s THOUGHT BUBBLE appears next to the other two, showing their three previously imagined castles. eLINOR But super strength won’t help us build our castles, Ari. The problem was that we kept taking pillows from each other. CU: The ants continue to carry the giant leaf, which suddenly rotates to reveal that it’s not just one ant doing the work--it’s three ants! ANGLE ON: Kids looking at ants. eLINOR, HAZEL, ARI Oh!/Look at that!/There are three of them! aRI The ants ARE super strong, but I guess it takes more than one to move a leaf THAT big. hAZEL Interesting. They’re helping each other. ANGLE ON: The three kids stand up and dust off their knees. eLINOR (disappointed) And we didn’t do that. hAZEL Helping each other is the only way these tiny ants can build this amazing anthill. aRI They also SHARE their building material. eLINOR We didn’t do that, either. We tried to build too many things, and we ended up taking from each other instead of helping each other. hAZEL So what do we do? Elinor’s face suddenly lights up; she has an idea! Mirroring her sudden run out the door, she suddenly runs back inside. Ari and Hazel once again look at each other, smile, and shrug, then follow Elinor back inside. CROSSFADE TO: 4. INT. ELINOR’S LIVING ROOM - A BIT LATER ELINOR, HAZEL, and ARI once more stand in ELINOR’s living room, next to the pile of cushions. eLINOR O-kay! A single THOUGHT BUBBLE appears, with trails to all three kids. Inside the thought bubble are Elinor’s original planned castle in red crayon, Hazel’s original planned castle in green crayon, and Ari’s original planned castle in blue crayon. The three drawings are in different parts of the thought bubble, not touching each other. eLINOR (CONT’D) This time, let’s work together. Just like the ants! We can’t all make exactly what we want because we don’t have enough pillows... As she says this, portions of each crayon drawing fade, leaving about a third of each. ELINOR (CONT’D) ...but if we change our plans, and help each other, we can make one amazingly awesome incredible mega-ANT HILL CASTLE! The remaining portions of the drawings slide together to make a multicolored, multifaceted castle that doesn’t look as stylistically coherent as before, and in fact looks a little like an anthill. Ari and Hazel are thrilled and high-five. Hazel/ari ANT HILL CASTLE WHOO-HOO!/ AMAZING PLAN! ELINOR First we’ll build your library, Hazel. HaZEL (jumping for joy) Yes! ari Ooh! Then can we make my drawbridge next? eLINOR Sure! And then we’ll make my slide! COOPERATIVE CASTLE BUILDING MONTAGE The kids sing as we show a montage of them working together on their castles: helping each other lift cushions, placing books in the library, getting ideas for the drawbridge, miming gentle suggestions about cushion placement, etc. At one point, Ari opens the door to grab a large leaf and stick from outside, then pretends to crawl like an ant, pretending to struggle to carry them with one hand, which makes the others giggle and then come pretend to help him lug them across the floor. It’s a fast-paced song, sort of doo-wop, maybe with “ shoo-be-doo-be ”-type syllables after the first two lines of each verse. ElINOR, HAZEL, ARI (singing) ELINOR: When your castle is a hassle, grass’ll be the place to go. HAZEL: Be a tourist in the forest, it’s the surest way to know. ARI: We see nature at a glance. HAZEL: And we decide to take a chance ELINOR: Because we learned a lesson from the ANTS! ALL: Let’s work together! Let’s work together! That’s the way do it better. Let’s work together! Let’s work together! ELINOR: To build the best hill ever known, HAZEL: A hill of dirt and twig and stone, ARI: An ant can’t do it all alone. (big finish) But we can do it if we work TOGETHER! END MONTAGE: When the song ends, the castle is nearly finished, and they look at it proudly, hands on hips. ELINOR Ants, we’ve got one more leaf to move! She indicates the largest pillow (the one ARI couldn’t lift before), and together the three of them hoist it on top of the castle: the roof! HAZEL Make that two more leaves! Hazel pulls out the leaf and twig ARI had been pretending to lug during the montage, ties the leaf stem to the twig, and attaches it to the castle as a flag. ELINOR Perfect! Good thing you carried in that leaf, Ari! ArI Well, I had some help. HazeL From your ant-friends! ELINOR All ants into the castle! The kids laugh, then eagerly play in their new castle. ELINOR, HAZEL, ARI (ad lib sounds of playing) FADE OUT, THE END

ET 107 The House that Ants Built - D1V1 02Jan19 .

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ELINOR’S TOWN EP 107 The House that Ants Built By: Adam Ruben Elinor’s Question: How can tiny ants build such large anthills? Logline: Elinor, Hazel, and Ari disagree about the best way to build a couch cushion castle. Curriculum Goals: SEP1b . Ask more complex questions about observable phenomena. ENGINEERING STANDARD. Begin to understand that engineering is a collaborative process during which ideas can be exchanged and shared with others while defining a problem and working to design, test, and revise a solution. (Engineering standard from the PBS framework as suggested by Sara.) LS4 . Begin to understand that animals and plants depend on other living things and nonliving things in the environment to meet some of their needs. ND3 . ( RTL Crosscutting concept ‘Structure and Function’) Understand that structures and materials in the natural world can be used or can inspire the engineering of structures with similar function in the designed world Main Characters: Elinor, Hazel, Ari Secondary Characters: None Incidental Characters: Ants Backgrounds - Ant hill in Elinor's yard, Elinor's living room Props - couch cushions, blankets, magnifying glass, twigs and leaf bits, book, leaf-on-a-stick flag OUTLINE: December 13, 2018 FIRST DRAFT: January 4, 2019 ELINOR ARI HAZEL SALLY Kai Cam Camilla Al All Goat twins Elinor, Hazel, Ari HaZEL, Ari, ELINOR, hAZEL, aRI, sALLY SILAS ELINOR, HAZEL, ARI, sally, kai Hazel, ari, sallu, kai, Camilla, Goat Twins ELINOR AND hAZEL ELINOR/hazel Hazel/ari (V.O.) (O.S.) (O.C.) (SUBTITLE) INT EXT I/E 2 4 CLUBHOUSE ON A HILL (WIDE) – DAY CLUBHOUSE -- DAY SMALL HILL -- DAY BOTTOM OF THE HILL -- DAY CLUBOUSE – LATER IRIS OUT THE END. INT. ELINOR'S LIVING ROOM EXT. ELINOR'S YARD DAY NIGHT AFTERNOON MORNING EVENING LATER MOMENTS LATER CONTINUOUS THE NEXT DAY A BIT LATER CUT TO: FADE IN: FADE OUT. FADE TO: DISSOLVE TO: BACK TO: MATCH CUT TO: JUMP CUT TO: FADE TO BLACK. CROSSFADE TO: 120