Science Fun!

Hello Scientists,
We had an incredible afternoon today with Scientist Kathy. Hopefully you have already heard about it. Kathy brought tons of materials and set up 5 centres where the kids got to do hands-on activities that led us to discover a lot about structures and materials. After rotating through the centres, each group worked together to build a stool using what we know about strong shapes. At the end, every group presented a stool capable of supporting 3 heavy books. 

Scientist Kathy has already written to me to say how much she liked working with our class and I can't wait to continue exploring what we did today. Here are some quick descriptions of the 5 centres and plenty of pictures for you to look at and talk about with your little engineer! 

At Natasha's centre, we learned about different materials. We sorted objects onto our placemats according to what they were made of and talked about why it's important to choose materials carefully depending on what it is needed for. We also learned about bamboo, a renewable resource. Ask your scientist how much bamboo grows in one day.

At Yukimi's centre, we talked about fasteners. We brainstormed lots of ideas of different fasteners and how we use them all the time in daily life. Ask your scientist what kinds of fasteners they have on their clothes. We got to experiment with tons of different fasteners including hammering some nails and screwing some screws!

At Scientist Kathy's centre, we talked about building a strong and stable structure that can withstand forces, like wind. We learned that the framework of a structure is very important and that buildings can have supports buried 11 stories underground! We experimented with 2 shapes, triangles and squares, and discovered that triangles are much stronger than squares and that we can use them in building to make structures stronger. Ask your scientist how they can take a regular square and add a piece to make it way stronger.

A Brook's centre we talked about the importance of having a strong base on a (tall) structure. To test this, the scientists were asked to decide if they were more stable standing on one foot or two. They looked at some pictures of buildings that have nice big bases, and then they built their own tall tower as a group. Ask your builder how tall their structure was and how they managed to get it that tall without falling over.

At Darin's centre, students learned about structures that support, structures that contain and structures that span. On a map, they found example of each (e.g., a shelf, a boat, a bridge) and then sorted objects into categories on placemats. It was interesting how some objects could serve more than one purpose. Ask your scientist to look around your house and find examples of structures that serve these purposes. Finally, students assembled a treehouse with ladders, doors, windows, roof pieces and supporting trees!

The Stool Experiment 

(Thanks for sending in all those newspapers - we had plenty.)

Testing...

Thank you again to the parents who helped out, and all the others who would have. These workshops are always a lot of work for the parents and wouldn't be possible without you. It was so nice to be able to stand back and watch all the activities happening without my help!