Neuroscience and Brains

We had a special guest today, a recent graduate of UNR who is going into the field of neuroscience. He spoke about how the brain worked and allowed us to observe real human brains. Quite a unique experience!

Dream Catchers

Over the past few weeks, we learned some basics about Native Americans and dream catchers. Then we got our hands busy and built dream catchers of our own.

Kids Court

Our field experience in learning about the judicial branch of government took place today at our local court house. The class did a great job executing all the aspects of a civil court. We also got top praise from the real bailiff, who said our class was the best he's had in the past year. Hands-on education at its best.

Being a "49er"

We learned about the California gold rush taking place in 1849 in social studies today and how that impacted the growth of the United States. We then took it further by panning for gold ourselves. Connecting in the science of how gold panning works, students panned in "dirt" (cereal) for "gold" (Lemon Heads).

Engineering Earthquake Proof Buildings

In collaboration with the College of Engineering, students investigated different structures they built out of Legos and tested the "buildings" on an earthquake table today. The challenge was to develop the tallest building that didn't fall apart.

Quill Pens

We connected social studies to reading this week. After reading some short historical fiction stories of the Revolutionary War time, students read an informational article on the writing tools used during that time, quill pens. Next, students made an actual quill pen from a feather and then wrote a journal entry as one of the historical fiction characters using the quill pen and ink.

Liquid Layers

Science this week focused on coming to an understanding of how different concentrated solutions lead to different densities and that the more concentrated a salt-solution is, the more dense it is, making it sink below a solution that is less dense. Students investigated four solutions and ranked them in order of most dense to less dense.