Week of December 19-23

This week, the 3rd graders learned about ecosystems. We created a model food web to show how the living and nonliving things in an ecosystem are connected. This helped us understand how much devastation an oil spill can cause. We also learned how birds are affected by oil spills. We put feathers in oily water and discovered that water is not effective at cleaning the oil off the feathers. We then used dish liquid to carefully remove the oil and were much more successful. That's actually how birds are cleaned after a real oil spill!

The 4th graders invited their classmates in to play the carnival games they created during the math cycle. Everyone had fun playing the games and learning about probability! We also continued to program our lego robots. We learned that the move tank block controls both motors, so in order to make the robot go straight, the left and right powers must be equal.

4th graders playing carnival games

In 5th grade, we went on an invention hunt around the school and identified inventions as either type II (known problem with unknown method to solve it and unknown solution - like fans) or type III (unknown problem with unknown method to solve it and unknown solution - like the Promethean Board). We discussed how inventors have to be observant problem-finders and think up ideas that people didn't even know they needed. We then learned about the 4 steps in the inventive process: idea, invention, innovation, improvement. Our challenge was to take the invention of cardboard and create an innovation and improvement using that invention. This group made a puppet theater and improved it by making handles on the back to open it more easily.