Engineering Fridays

Well, Fridays OFFICIALLY rule!

We are now having Engineering Fridays. So every Friday, until the end of the school year, our days are dedicated to designing, problem solving, creating and testing. We have done a few science experiments and math based problems in our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) books, but this was our first official go at engineering in kindergarten! 

Mrs. Baer and I got together and created the STEM books to incorporate some more hands-on learning in our classrooms! Each Friday our Engineering day will be focused around a specific book and a design problem that was in the book. 

Today  read the book "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." We discussed the problem that they had in the story and what qualities make a good bridge. We concluded in order to make a good bridge it needed to be: 

1. Strong

2. Long (at least 18" to get from table to table)

3. Have side supports

4. Straight 

We knew our bridge needed to pass 2 tests: 

1. Support the weight of 3 billy goats (Schleich figurines) 

2. Get a moveable car across the bridge 

First We had to Design our Bridges - looking both at our materials and the length of the bridge.

Then we spent 35 minutes creating our bridges. Most students wanted and needed more time that that, but we decided that engineers work on projects for weeks, months and even years, so this was just our "first" testing round. 

First we had to test the bridges to see if they would support our 3 billy goats. 

Then we tested our bridges to see if they could hold the weight of a car and if the car could get from point A to Point B without falling off. This is where it was really important to have a straight bridge with some sort of side rails! 

Overall the day was a HUGE success! We had all 19 bridges support 3 billy goats AND 10 bridges were strong and straight enough to get the cars across! It was pretty impressive engineering! We cannot wait until our next Fun Friday! 

Welcome to the Robot Room!

Welcome to our Classroom! Please watch the Classroom Tour below to see how our classroom is set up, as well as daily expectations for your child! Enjoy!

Creating the Robot Room

As you know, we have decided to convert our Rainforest Room into a Robot Room. This was going to be a quick summer project, but when the kids voted on it, they had all these different ideas and suggestions on how to help out! It was amazing hearing all their suggestions and ideas! So, I went with it! We decided that every Friday we are going to take something from the Rainforest Room and change it into something for a Robot/Space Room. First item up, was making planets. We did this first because we just so happened to be doing a paper mache unit in Art class anyways. 

First up, we blew up 8 round ballons and paper mached them during art class. 

 Next we invited some parents to come help us paint our planets! We were VERY lucky and had 6 parents that volunteered to help us out! Since we had so many, we decided to break into small groups and each group got their own planet. Mrs. Rehder and Mrs. Bush each took one group too, so it worked perfectly! First the groups needed to look up images of their planet to decide which color to paint their planet. 

After their planets were painted, the groups had to research their planet. They could use their books and iPads to find facts about their planets to present to the class. Kids used videos, images, and 3D images to research their facts. 

Then after was done painting, we had to get ready to present! 

They were so excited to show off their planets!

Everyone was ready to present each group came up and showed the class what they learned. It was so adorable seeing how much they learned and how proud they were of their planets! We cannot wait to hang them up and display them for next year's class! 

We even had some of the other kindergarten classes come look at the finished product! They were pretty impressed and so was I! Check out the slideshow to see how everyone worked together to learn facts about the planets!