Week of December 14-18

This week, the 3rd graders were given an engineering design challenge. They had to build a tower to hold up a stuffed cow at least one foot tall using only 50 index cards, two feet of tape, and scissors. Even though not all groups were successful at building the tower, everyone was successful at using the engineering design process to create a plan and improve upon it! Here were two towers that met the criteria.

In 4th grade, some groups figured out how to use loops to make programs repeat. One group even learned how to use a switch block to get the robot to follow a line and move around the edge of a sheet of butcher paper!!!

The 5th graders are working on coming up with essential questions that they want to work on answering in this cycle. There have been so many great ideas - How can I show kids that they can have fun without technology? How can I show people that food can be healthy and still be delicious? How can I improve the selection of books in the Menlo Park library?

These are just a few of the many wonderful questions the students will be exploring.