Html structure

<body>
    <p id="sentence">
        <span class="word_do">do</span>
        <span class="word_tigers">tigers</span>
        <span class="word_melt">melt</span>
        <span class="word_like">like</span>
        <span class="word_butter">butter</span>
        <span class="word_in">in</span>
        <span class="word_the">the</span>
        <span class="word_forest">forest</span>
        <span class="word_questionmark">?</span>
    </p> 

    <div id="stage">
        <div class="do"></div>
        <div class="tigers object"></div>
        <div class="melt object"></div>
        <div class="like"></div>
        <div class="butter object"></div>
        <div class="in"></div>
        <div class="the"></div>
        <div class="forest object"></div>
        <div class="questionmark"></div>
    </div>
   
    <script src="java1.js"></script>
</body>

now all the divs are also siblings, so they will listen to same command that controls the spans(words)

Javascript

previous version

basic variables

let sentence = document.getElementById("sentence")//this is added from the first version, in the first version, I didn’t define "sentence", so there was no way to know where to put the words back from removedWords in "bringBack"function.
let words = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll("#sentence span"));
let removedWords = [];

randomly removing, bringing words back function

function removeRandomWord () {
    if (words.length > 1) {
        let pickRandom = Math.floor(Math.random() * words.length);
        let remove = words.splice(pickRandom,1)[0]; //had to add "[0]" to pull the word out of the array and turn it into node. switching between nodelists and arrays requires extra steps
        removedWords.push(remove);
        remove.remove(); //.remove() method removes the element from the DOM.
    }
}

function bringbackRandomWord () {
    if (removedWords.length > 0) {
        let pickRandom = Math.floor(Math.random() * removedWords.length);
        let bringBack = removedWords.splice(pickRandom,1)[0];
        words.push(bringBack);
        sentence.innerHTML = sentence.innerHTML + " "; //try to add space between the spans but this doesn't work at the moment.
        sentence.appendChild(bringBack); //opposite of remove() is appendChild()
    }
}

two innerWidth variables and "resize" eventlistener

let prevWidth = window.innerWidth;

first defined prevWidth as innerWidth outside of the eventlistener

window.addEventListener("resize", () => {
    let currWidth = window.innerWidth;
    let widthChange = Math.abs(prevWidth - currWidth);
    console.log(widthChange)

    if (currWidth < prevWidth && widthChange > 100) {
        removeRandomWord();
        prevWidth = currWidth;
    }
    else if (prevWidth < currWidth && widthChange > 100) {
        bringbackRandomWord();
        prevWidth = currWidth;
    }
     //instead of updating prevWidth at the very end of the function, update it inside each if statement
     //previous version was updating currWidth to prevWidth, i thought i was saving the currWidth to prevWidth but it works other way around.
});