Skip to main content

Kindergarten Builds Wind-Resistant Towers

This week, kindergarten classes learned about skyscrapers and the two major challenges architects and engineers face when designing and building these tall structures -- creating a sturdy foundation that can support the weight of the structure and developing a design that takes into account strong wind. In the lab, students built their own skyscrapers and then tested their resilience against a stream of "wind" from a hair dryer. In the process, students also practiced our STEM mindset of digging into mistakes and using information from a failed attempt to improve their designs.











Comments

Post a Comment

Use the form below to provide a response to a post. Feel free to ask questions and offer suggestions, but please maintain a respectful tone of discussion.

Popular posts from this blog

Technology Club: Scratch

For the past two months, second and third grade students participating in our after school Technology Club have been using the block-based coding tools in Scratch to create animations. In the club, students tinkered with graphic design, sound, and coding to bring their ideas to life. Check out some photos of their designs!
Post a Comment
Read more

7th & 8th Graders Showcase Automata!

  Several times each year, our school specialist team works together to create integrated units of study, where students explore a common theme through each of our content areas -- art, music, library/multimedia, PE, and STEM. Our 7th and 8th graders recently completed a Winter Carnival themed unit, where they worked on creating products or performances to showcase during a special carnival event for students in grades PK-2. In STEM class, students designed, built, and improved automata, which are mechanical devices that generate motion through a series of spinning cams, axles, and cam followers. Image Source: Adafruit The following success criteria guided the work for our 7th & 8th grade students: The automata must have a winter theme. The automata must feature at least one element that spins, goes up or down, or moves side to side. The automata design must include at least 10 different materials. Additionally, students were challenged to create a...
Post a Comment
Read more

7th & 8th Graders Code In Python

In their first computer science project of the year, our 7th and 8th graders took a big step in their journeys as programmers -- moving from block-based to text-based coding. In previous STEM projects, students have used tools that allow them to snap together code "blocks" to make things happen. In this unit, they were responsible for typing commands to tell the computer how to execute actions. The image below shows the difference between text-based coding and block-based coding. While there are many different text-based coding languages, our 7th & 8th graders learned skills in Python, due to its beginner-friendly nature. Still, making this transition is not easy, so students were provided with resources and modules to work through that allowed them to have some starting directions and then challenged them to stretch their thinking by generating their own additions and modifications. Here's a look at a project, called "Turtle Race," in action:  https:...
Post a Comment
Read more