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Back to School, Diving Right Into STEM!

This week featured an exciting return to school, with students engaging in STEM projects in our new outdoor learning spaces. Rather than having a different special each day, we've modified the schedule this year so that each class gets to spend a week at a time in each of the special content areas. This change allowed the first groups in STEM to dive right into engineering and design challenges this week! 

First grade engineers explored buoyancy as they tried to create rafts using apple pieces and toothpicks. During this challenge, students practiced brainstorming several ideas, persistence, and analyzing designs for successes and possible revisions. Take a look at some of their creations in the photos below.



Third grade students also began the year with a challenge that required creating multiple iterations of a design. Given several sheets of paper, students folded and tested several paper airplanes, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses after each flight. Once students created a design that flew successfully, they began exploring adding paper clip "cargo" onto different points of their airplanes to explore how they influenced the flight of the planes. This was a great activity to tackle in our outdoor learning space!



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