Dry Ice Lab

We combined the NV Day/Halloween Party with science. After reading about what root beer is and where it comes from, we used a recipe and made a giant batch of root beer for our party. Using math, students converted the 4 gallons of water we needed to how many cups since we didn't have a gallon jug to measure out the water. We also converted ounces to tablespoons to help measure the vanilla accurately. Being health conscious, we reduced the 5 pounds of sugar down to "only" 4. Finally, we added the sassafras flavoring and the 10 pounds of dry ice. As it "brewed" in the classroom over the next hour and a half we investigated the properties of dry ice, coming to an understanding of so many more principles then just learning why it carbonates the soda.

Crazy Hair and S.T.E.M.

This week's highlights were engineering students who came in and taught about different shapes in engineering, and how the triangle is the strongest shape when it comes to engineering support. Students used this information to build a structure that could hold the most weight, using toothpicks and gum drops, or straws and gum drops. Many of the structures held A LOT of weight!

Friday was also "crazy hair day", where students could really get creative with their hairstyles in an effort to help raise money for the sixth graders' end of year party.

S.T.E.M. Bridge Building

We invited in the College of Engineering from UNR on Thursday to do a Science, Technology, Mathematics, and Engineering lesson. They began with a short lesson on UNR and the types of engineers in the world. Next, students became engineers and built suspension bridges. We will have two more lessons before Winter Break from the same group, each time focusing on a different type of engineering process.

Printmaking

In art this week we learned the art of printmaking. Students traced a leaf onto foam so that it was indented. Then they applied ink to create a "stamp". This was used to print the image onto paper.

Making our Scarecrow

With the theme of this year's class scarecrows being "a book", our class decided to make a scarecrow from The Sign of the Beaver, the novel we read first quarter. The class decided which scene to create and then came up with 6 different groups of things to make: Attean, Matt, background, sign, large bear, and bear cub. Students choose what group each wanted to be in and then two afternoons were spent creating our masterpiece. This 100% student led, student built scarecrow turned out great!