Our Collaboratory Cubs Continue to Shine

Our kindergarten engineers completed their bridge projects this week, and I am so proud of their finished products!  They worked hard through every step of the Engineering Design Process and persevered through multiple improvements to make their bridges the best they could be!  Take a look at their wonderful creations:

Our Pre-K friends were so inspired by the bridges that their kindergarten friends built that they wanted to join in on the fun!  The students were challenged to make sturdy rainbow bridges that could hold as much leprechaun gold as possible, using only clay and pipe cleaners.   The students got a great mini-lesson in the ROYGBIV rainbow, and they got to work on their fine motor skills, all while helping a little leprechaun!  I love that they are already building their background knowledge of bridges because it will come in handy when they are in kindergarten!

Speaking of leprechauns, our first graders have been given the difficult task of trying to catch one!  We read Leprechaun on the Loose which is a great story about how a little boy set out to catch the leprechaun who was causing some mayhem in his classroom, but he catches him in a kind and gentle way and then decides to let him go so that he can save his class's St. Patrick's Day party.  Inspired by the story, our firsties have decided to create kind and gentle leprechaun traps so that they can hopefully catch leprechauns, learn more about their lifestyles, give them a special treat, and let them go.  

Our second grade environmental engineers have completed their first prototypes of their water filtration systems and have moved on to making some improvements to their designs for their next prototypes.  They have done some truly amazing work!

Our third graders will be using what they learned from the sounding pole experiment to continue on in their ocean engineering unit.

Our fourth grade mechanical engineers have completed their first prototypes of their windmills and have been actively testing them and making some improvements to them.  Some groups have made such strong improvements that their windmills are powerful enough to lift cups of weights!

We are looking forward to another great week ahead!