Creativity, Kindness, and Love

There was so much to celebrate in the TES Collaboratory this week:  Kindness Week, the 100th Day of School, and Valentine's Day!  Take a look at our Collaboratory Cubs in action:

Our Pre-School friends finished up their Valentine's Day challenges.  Their first challenge was to sort a box of candy hearts by color, count how many hearts of each color they had, and then design and create Cupid's Castle (or tallest structure that they could).  The second challenge was to use 10 chewy hearts to design and create something special to give someone for Valentine's Day (and we connected it back to reading and discussing The Day It Rained Hearts)

Our kindergarten engineers have almost completed their bridge projects, and they have been doing an excellent job communicating with their teammates!  I'm so proud of how they have been collaborating, sharing ideas, and offering feedback to one another in respectful and caring ways.  

It was a special treat for me to have our first grade classes on the 100th Day of School!  As a former first grade teacher, the 100th Day was one of my favorite days of the year, and I was thrilled to be able to experience this day with all of the firsties this year!  I wanted to put together a challenge that would incorporate both the 100th Day of School and Kindness Week.  This week, I challenged each first grade class to take 100 index cards, write one way to show kindness on each card, and then use the cards to design and create a Kindness Critter (and because it was the 100th Day, they had to use all 100 cards).  It was so fun to see how the first graders divided up the tasks so that they each got to write on a handful of cards and use their handful of cards to build one of the body parts of their critters.  I was so proud of their finished products! 

The Janicki-Hare crew created a bunny!

The Haynes crew created a butterfly!

The Kimble kids created a 3D crocodile!

Here are some pics of the firsties hard at work:

Our second grade environmental engineers started working on the imagining and planning steps of their water filtration systems this week!  They worked hard with their group members to plan the best filters they could while keeping their budget in mind.

  

Our third grade ocean engineers began to build their ocean floor models this week, which will be used often over the next few weeks of our unit.

I am looking forward to the adventures that next week will bring! 

Projects, Parades, and Professional Development

Our Collaboratory Cubs were energized this week after the big Eagles win at the Super Bowl last Sunday!  Their enthusiasm was contagious to everyone around them, and it carried over into the amazing work that they produced this week!  We even had our very own #TigerStrong Eagles Parade on Thursday at TES to celebrate!  Take a look at our incredible week:

On Monday, our kinders continued building their bridges, and it has been incredible to watch them problem-solve through some of the challenges they faced!  Our AM Pre-School students read The Day It Rained Hearts, and then it actually started raining hearts in the Collaboratory!  Our students decided to use their hearts to build lots of cool creations, from Valentine's boxes to snakes and everything in between!

On Tuesday, our firsties completed their lighting systems, and we discussed all of the learning that we took away from this project.  We also talked about the most difficult parts of building the lighting systems and why it was so important that we persevered even when things got tough.

On Wednesday, our second graders took their water filtration experiments to the next level by testing out the effectiveness of different filter materials when filtering three different types of contaminated water, represented by muddied water, tea-soaked water, and cornstarch water.  It really got the students thinking about which combinations of materials they would like to use in their final water filter designs. 

On Thursday, we pressed "pause" on our normal units to prepare for our first-ever #TigerStrong Eagles Parade to celebrate their Super Bowl victory!  The Collaboratory turned into a green paradise!

On Friday, our fourth graders began to plan out their windmill designs, and they created their windmill bases.  It was awesome to watch how they applied everything they had learned so far in this unit in their designs!

On Saturday, our district hosted the first-ever EdCamp Tabernacle, uniting over 200 educators from the South Jersey area for a day of learning and connecting!  Thank you to everyone who organized and attended this event!  Our week may have started with a big win for the Eagles, but it definitely ended with a big win for our local edu-stars!