This Week in STEAM

 October 5- Octrober 9, 2020

Each week I will highlight work of different classes in each division.  This week Nursery 3, Grade 3, and Grade 7 are highlighted.

Early Childhood

This week Nursery 3 had a challenge based on the book It's Not Easy Being Big! by Stephanie St. Pierre.  This book features the familiar characters of Sesame Street and highlights the concept of comparitive size.  Students were challenged to build a wall from LEGO blocks and balance plastic animals on the wall from biggest to smallest.

Bigger and biggest blocks

I read this book last spring during remote learning to the Nursery classes.  The video is below.  It includes another STEAM challenge on comparitive size that you can try at home. 

Lower School 

Grade 3 took advantage of the nicer weather to have STEAM class outside.  They explored the concepts of flight this week as they were challenged to create paper airplances from three different types of paper to see traveled the furthest and stayed aloft the longest.

Lower school students also began work on coding.  They used Kodable and Scratch.  Students will continue to work on coding skills throughout the year as strong coding skills will allow them to work on more complex projects in Middle School.  Coding was introduced in class.  To help further develoip these skills, students will be provided with optional coding homework challenges and in addition to lessons in class. 

Here is an example of a coding project created in Scratch by 4th Grader Juliana.  It used block coding and loops.

Middle School

This week students in Middle School started individual rotations.  During these rotations students work a partner but each pair is working on a different project. These initial rotations feature a variety of challenges so students can work to develop their breadth of knowledge of the systems of technology.  In Grade 7 projects included claymation, website design, digital graphics through the creation of comic books, mechanics and structures using Zometools and K'Nex, and scientific data and analysis using Vernier sensors to test their design of insulated cups.  All projects are designed to help students grow their 21st Century Skills.

Middle School STEAM Collaboration in 2020

The STEAM Lab was designed to teach students 21st Century Skills including collaboration.  What does collaboration look like in 2020 when students can not sit at the same desk or work on the same materials?  How can projects be adjusted to facilitate students learning to work together under these conditions?

This week students in Grade7 demonstrated how they could use technology to collaborate on a Media Literacy project.  

Students were paired together for this project.  Each group of students used a ZOOM breakout room to discussed their project as they worked.

They used Google Slides to collaborate on the documentation of their work.  

The results of their collaborations were fake Instagram posts based on comical pictures.  Each group had to create two posts - one that could be evaluated as credible and one that had the indications of a fake news story.

What posts would you create?

The Kindness Pets' First Adventure

The Kindness Pet's house is complete.  Our solution to creating a house for our pets involved paper-maching a plastic pumpkin to create a round home.  We then mod podged and hot glued a straw hat on top.  The house was spray painted brown and a LEGO door was attached.  When the house was complete we realized that the door was too high so we designed and created stairs from sticks.  Problem solved!

I think the pets are happy in their house.  They challenged us today to start spreading kindness.  We made simple homemade granola bars (recipe below) and cut flowers from our yard.  We delivered this cheer to our great aunt.

How can you be challenged to share kindness today?

Homemade Granola Bars

Ingredients:

3/4 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup honey

2 1/4  to 2 1/2 cups quick oats

Mix peanut butter and honey together in a microwave safe bowl.  

Microwave for 10 seconds.  Stir.

Add oats. Stir until all oats are coated with peanut butter.

Press into a 8x8 square dish and place in the refrigerator to cool.

When cooled, use a pizza cutter to cut into bar shapes.

You can add your favorite "extras" with the oats . 

You could try mini chocolate chips, raisins or diced dates.

Adjust the amount of oats accordingly.

The Kindness Elves are Coming to the Remote "Lab"

I was recently inspired by an article about The Kindness Elves and decided to incorporate a version in my "Remote Summer STEAM Lab" (aka my dining room).  The Kindness Elves were originally designed as an alternative to the Elf of the Shelf.  Instead of the elves appearing every morning in mischievous ways, the elves appear each morning with a note about an act of kindness for children to do. Check out the website in the image above to find out more about The Kindness Elves.

The original Kindness Elves are dressed for winter so our STEAM Challenge today was to create summertime elf alternatives and to create a home for them in the remote Lab.

I found three possible alternatives for elves around my house.

With input from my sons, I decided the lab should have "Kindness Pets".

The next step was to create a house for them.  

Inspired by the picture above, I gathered supplies from around my house.

Check back next week to see the finished project,

and to find out more about the challenges the Kindness Pets leave in the lab.

If this inspires you to create Kindness Elves or Kindness Pets on your own, 

I would love to see pictures of them.

The Adventure Begins

It is the first day of the first full week of summer vacation.

This summer will be an adventure of discovery.  

And what does every adventurer or explorer need?  

An Adventure Journal

You can make your own Adventure Journal.

You will need:

A copybook

A printed picture of an old map

A glue stick

A copy of the Adventure Journal Label

To make the journal cut the map to cover the front of the copybook.  

Glue it to the copybook.

Then cut the journal label to a size you like and glue that on top.

That is all there is to it!

This journal was made from a copybook that had been repurposed.  The copybook had originally been used in school this year 

but had plenty of blank pages left in it.   

Summer STEAM

Today is Memorial Day.  

It is the unofficial start of summer.

So what better day to start this Summer STEAM blog.

I have created an Early Childhood Summer STEAM Calendar of activities.

Click here to check out the activities for June.

Additional activities will be added to the calendar throughout the summer.  I will also use this blog to show examples of the activities and provide more details.

In the coming week I will also be posting activities for Lower School and Middle School.

Subscribe to get emails when new material is posted.