Leaves and towers and buses! Oh my! The Holden Arboretum trip was a blast! Many of our students enjoyed their very first bus ride, while older students had fun teaching bus games. We were able to learn about different leaves and trees, catch wildlife that lives in the arboretum, and walk through the canopy. During our work time this week, first, third, and fourth years worked with different extensions of the Constructive Triangles. First year students transformed the blue triangles into new shapes. Third year students explored equivalence of the shapes inside the Small Hexagonal Box. Fourth year students found equivalence between different parallelograms, squares, and rectangles with our Euclid’s Theorem Drawer. Second grade students had their first look at our Geographic Feature Cards to learn about caves, icebergs, fiords, and islands.
This month, students are focusing on Composition of the Earth experiments. This experiment is about the density of solid objects. This experiment has a pot filled with sand. In the pot are iron objects, ping pong balls, and other plastic objects. Students push all objects to the bottom of the sand, then shake the pot to see what happens. The iron objects sink and the plastic objects rise to the top. Students can conclude that denser objects settle under substances or objects that are less dense.These first and second year students are completing their constellation viewing tubes. Students have poked holes through printed constellations and glued them to tubes to be able to view the constellations in the light. Other students have decided to paint constellations or poke holes in a sheet of paper to use to cover a light! There has been a lot of creativity with this project!One of our favorite parts of the Holden Arboretum trip was the Canopy Walk. This Walk was 500′ long and 65′ above the ground. We were able to walk through the canopy of the forest to see a different perspective of the trees and animals.Here, our students are on top of the Emergent Tower, 120′ above the ground! Our students were nervous as they climbed higher and higher, but everyone made it to the top! The view was amazing.These students are searching for live and dead forest material!One of our activities at the Arboretum was finding the age of trees. Partners were given ribbons of differing lengths and were sent to find the tree it fit around. Our guide told us there is a mathematical formula for finding the age of live trees based on diameter. This formula changes based on type of tree.These students are holding the fruit of a Buttonbush. These fruits were used on clothing as actual buttons!
A Peek into Next Week
Lower Elementary students will be working on small and large bead frames, beginning dinosaur research, adding angles, and studying the layers of the Earth. Upper Elementary students will study homonyms and prepositions, will explore the rules of electron clouds, and work through angle word problems.
REMINDERS: Next week we have our first “Bring Your Parent to Work Time” Days. If you are signed up, you will receive an email reminding you of your time, with some information to review.
