Collaboratory Corner

Engineering Excellence

It was very busy in the Collaboratory last week!  Take a look at some of our adventures!

Our Pre-School engineers had a big problem to solve this week: How might we help the Three Little Pigs build a safer house?  I was so impressed by their creativity in their designs!  We even tested the houses for durability using the "Wolf Wind" tester!

In kindergarten, we have been talking all about the life cycles of green technology and how paper can be considered a green technology since it can be recycled and used again and again.  Our discussion led us to using our own Collaboratory paper scraps and old magazines to begin to make our own recycled paper.  We even took a Ms. Frizzle-esque field trip to TES Headquarters where Mrs. O'Malley was able to provide us with even more paper scraps from the shredder to lighten up the color of our recycled paper mixture (since the shredded paper was mostly white and pink).  This way, the paper that we make will be a lighter color, which will make it easier to see what we write on it!  We can't wait to use our recycled paper to create our solar oven blueprints!  We are loving how we can use a green technology to help plan the creation of another green technology!

Many of our kindergarten students (and students from other grades as well) were able to help prepare our TES Rain Garden, too!

 Our first grade engineers discovered how to make magnets levitate all on their own through their research and experimentation.  They are almost ready to make their maglev systems!  The magnets have really "attracted" their interest (haha I couldn't resist!)!

In second grade, our environmental engineers tested out a variety of materials to see how well they might be able to remove oil from water.  Our testing results will help us imagine and create a plan for our big oil spill project that is coming up soon!

In third grade, our ocean engineers have created their submersible prototypes, and they are working hard on making improvements to their designs!  We can't wait to show off what their final designs look like and how they work!

Our fourth grade students have continued to read A Reminder for Emily to help them gain some background knowledge on electrical engineering!  We can't wait to start planning and creating our own alarm circuits!

We hope that you can stop by the Collaboratory during the Night of the Stars event on Thursday, May 17th to check out our students' awesome work!