New this Week

Even though it is the week before Thanksgiving break, we have many new enrichment activities taking place at Laurel Mountain.

This week, I will be starting new Primary Education Thinking Skill (PETS) lessons in first and second grade.  In first grade, we will start to talk about Isabel the Inventor, who uses divergent thinking.  She loves to brainstorm and think of new ideas.  Ask your first grader what tool Isabel uses to help her brainstorm.  In second grade, we will continue learning about convergent thinking with Dudley and Sybil.  In this lesson, the students have to figure out the patterns in some grids using visual clues.  These lessons will be taking place this week and the week after Thanksgiving.

Mrs. Hein's fifth grade class started their NXT Mindstorm lessons today.  I have really gotten these lessons down to a science, since is the fourth class I have worked with.  Today, I did the introductory lesson about robots and the students started to construct their "Star Trek" doors.  The Heroes did a super job of working together in teams and taking turns building and gathering parts.  I was very impressed.

Finally, I started working with Mr. Hance's class on the LEGO lessons focusing on gears.  We discussed input, output, drive gear, driven gear and gear ratio.  Then, the class began to build a model of a gear. Tomorrow we will discuss the gear they built using the LEGO Educational Kits and continue to build other gears.  We will then move on to pulleys.  Eventually, the students will get to build a "leaf sweeper" and do some a variety of trials to see which gears and pulleys make the sweeper work the best. 

Continuing to develop the whole child....

1st Grade Enrichment

The first grade students are learning about maps and directions. In Ms. Wilson's class, Mr. Shepherd came in on Friday and showed the class some maps he used for work.  The maps were of the area around Cannon Lake where they were running new electrical wires.

He also showed us a map he used when he was in the Marines at Camp Swift. It showed where different teams went for their maneuvers and training exercises.

Finally he showed us how to see LME on the computer using Google Earth! The kids loved it. It was a great addition to our map study.

What's Inside My Body?

What's inside my body? Miss Lofaro's Leapfrogs studied bones last year as first graders, but they wanted to know more about the human body, so they did just that.

They read some books and saw a PowerPoint presentation so that they could learn more about the heart, lungs and digestive system (esophagus, stomach, liver and intestines).

Then they created a wearable poster of what the inside of their body looked like! Check it out in the pictures below.

PETS Update

This week starts my second round of PETS (Primary Education Thinking Skills) lessons in 3rd grade.  Over the next two weeks, we will continue to focus on convergent thinking.  With convergent thinking, you read and organize the clues, reflect and think about the clues, use clues together and come up with an answer.  The students will solve some more puzzles that the friends in the Puzzlers Club created.  Ask your 3rd grade students which friends in Crystal Pond Woods use convergent thinking.

In second grade, Dudley is helping Sybil clean her lab.  Dudley and the students use analytical thinking to label the containers of specimens in her lab.  Then, we use deductive thinking to put the containers in a certain order on the high shelf in Sybil's lab.  Deductive and analytical thinking are both types of convergent thinking. 

Finally, in first grade the students are working on deductive thinking.  Dudley has created a party game for Felix Frog's birthday party.  The students use a Venn Diagram and deductive thinking to identify everyone at the celebration.

The PETS lessons are fun and challenging.  I love the fact that each grade's lessons carry over to the next year.  Therefore, the students are using their prior knowledge about how we think to help them solve the current year's puzzles and problems. 

Continuing to develop the whole child...

Apple Day!

The Donna Lee Lovebugs love science and cooking!

Since apples are plentiful this time of year, each Lovebug brought an apple to school for us to compare, sort, measure, investigate, and record the data. Then we used all of the apples to make applesauce.

First we had to read the recipe and follow the directions. We washed our apples, chopped them, and added all of the extra ingredients to the cooking pot. The "secret" ingredient is brown sugar! Yummy!

While we waited for it to cook, we did an experiment with apples: Does the inside of an apple change color after it is cut? We predicted and recorded the data in our Science Journals.

After PE, we checked on our experiment and wrote down the results.

Science and cooking is just a favorite with this age group. Plus, you get to eat your work!

Star Trek Door Pictures

Here are some pictures from the "Star Trek" door building with Mrs. Castro's class.

Reading building instructions from the computer.

Searching for the correct parts.

Problem solving with Mrs. Levitan

A completed door!

Another week, another door

This week I am working with Mrs. Castro's Cougars on building and programming with the NXT Mindstorm LEGO Educational kits.  Once again, the students are building the Star Trek doors.  These doors will open when triggered by the touch sensor.  The doors will play music as the open then the light sensor will tell the door to stop.  The door will stay open for a specific amount of time that is decided by the student. 

Today, the students are busy building the door with the NXT hardware.  The students are learning that it is very important to follow EACH and EVERY direction.  One missing peg, one wrong beam and the door will not work.  And then the door will have to be rebuilt.  There is lots of teamwork and problem solving happening today. 

Tomorrow we will start programming the doors using the NXT software.

Continuing to develop the whole child...