Kindergarteners Work with Robots

Kindergarteners are using Legos with Edison Robots to do some simple coding. In these pictures, you can see the robots following a line. We used a simple bar code to program the robots.

Fourth Graders Learn to Work in Base-3

 

Some of the fourth graders in Mr. Speno's class and in Anne's class have been learning to work in base-3 by playing games and doing computation. Here's what one student wrote about base-3 and how it compares to the number system that we use, base-10:

There are similarities and differences between the base-10 and the base-3 number systems. Both base-3 and base-10 use the digits 0 through 2. Digits are symbols that represent an amount. In math, they use similar bundling and place value. In both bases, the order of the digits matters. However, there are differences too. Base-10 uses digits 3-9. Base-3 does not. Base-10 bundles in groups of 10. Base-3 bundles in groups of 3. We have ones, tens, hundreds, etc but base-3 has ones, threes, nines, twenty sevens, etc. Base three seems unusual but it's not that different from what we usually use.

Mapping out Bunny's Adventure

Students listened to a story about Bunny and Giraffe playing hide and seek:

Click here to listen to the story.

Then they created maps to show Bunny's journey. Here's an example from a first grader:

Students also had an opportunity to write out Bunny's Adventure:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Grade 4: Robot Hands

Fourth graders are making robot hands at home. Here's a picture of one student's robot hand:

Phill Made a Cardboard Dragon!

Check out this dragon made at home!

Kindergarteners Write Sentences About Animals

This seems like so long ago, but I wanted to share these pictures. The kindergartners learned about oviparous animals (those that lay eggs). Here they are "writing" sentences by arranging words. Their partner got to guess what animal they were talking about.

Toilet Paper Tube Challenge

If you do this and you want to share pictures, I will post them here on my blog. You can send them to me at my school email address. If you don't know it, just contact your classroom teacher and they can tell you.

Here's Trevor's sculpture of a car with a bike rack:

Enriching Activities to do at Home (that don't require special materials)

Orly’s List of Fun, Enriching, and Educational Activities:

• build a city out of empty boxes and cans
• make a dollhouse using empty boxes and cans
• use cardboard tubes to make a marble run
• attach boxes together to make a giant robot, dragon, or whatever!
• make a diorama
• make a musical instrument
• use cans to make a mobile or wind chime
• create a bottle cap mosaic
• do some papier mache (make paste from flour and water)
• design a playground for an ant
• build a domino run (you don’t even need dominos- try it with books or other objects)
• make a Rube Goldberg machine
• if you can, spend time outside in your yard or in the woods
• write a story
• draw cartoons/comics
• create a scavenger hunt around your home for your family
• make a board game
• make your own puppets and put on a puppet show for your family
• bake something (if you double the recipe or halve the recipe, you are doing math)
• cook something together
• “Chopped” (Based on the cooking show, pick three random ingredients and create a meal out of them. Once, my children used kix cereal, lemon, and cream cheese.)
• have a daily debate

Grade 3: Toothpick and Marshmallow Structures

The third graders have been learning about the stability of different shapes. They decided triangles are best. Here they are trying to use triangles to make tall towers.

Dragon Island

Second graders are creating an island for the dragon from My Father's Dragon. They made their island out of salt dough covering up crumpled pieces of paper. Here they are painting the islands. The next step will be to map out their islands using a grid system.

1st Graders Publish Poems about the Moon

I visited Laura's first grade classroom to help them with a project about the moon. They had written several sentences using adjectives to describe the moon. I worked with them on revising: the students cut apart their sentences and rearranged them until they liked the way their poem sounded. Some students even deleted one or two sentences. Then they published these poems with a painting of the moon. These paintings became flaps that lift up to show the poem hidden underneath.

6th Graders Design Boats

These 6th graders are using math and science to build boats and predict how many pennies their boats would hold.

The Land of Treble

Third graders are learning about our number system by imagining a place where things come in groups of three. Here they are playing a game called, "Race to a Trickle." In the Land of Treble, a trickle is the cost of a slurp (the pet everyone wants in Treble). Here the students roll a die, and then take gickles or bickles, trading them in until they have a trickle.

2nd Graders Celebrate Trees

The second graders completed a field guide to the trees in the Academy School forest. They celebrated by binding the books together and drinking tea made from pine needles and black birch sticks that they gathered.

Kindergarten Math with Spinners

These kindergarteners are spinning their spinners and graphing their results to see which color "wins" by getting to ten first.

Kindergarteners Study Leo Lionni

Kindergarteners are reading books by Leo Lionni. Here is some artwork inspired by one of his books and our chart to keep track of the story elements.

6th Graders Study the Dust Bowl

The sixth grade classes learned about the Great Depression when reading Bud, Not Buddy. In the enrichment room, they extended their study by learning about the Dust Bowl. After some research and reading more fiction that takes place during that time period, they wrote essays and poems and published them into these beautiful books.

Here are some close-ups of one of the books so you can get an idea of how it was constructed.