Our Second and Third Grade STEM Club members put their engineering skills to work yesterday, building bridges! There were four types of bridges they were required to build and test: a beam bridge, arch bridge, accordion bridge, beam bridge with arch support, and finally, and accordion bridge with a beam on top and a beam on the bottom! Phew! Hard work!
After testing each bridge, our students found the accordion bridge with the beams on the top and bottom would hold the heaviest loads! We learned the more support the bridge has, the heavier the load it can handle. We also talked about the importance of engineers building bridges correctly, as it can have disastrous results! (Check out the video of Gallopin' Gertie to see an example!)
Click the play button below to see Gallopin' Gertie!
Stay tuned to see what our fourth and fifth grade students were up to yesterday!
Don't forget Green STEM Club will meet tomorrow! December is a different month due to the holidays! See you then, and remember to wear your STEM T-Shirt!
This is a friendly reminder our schedule will be different in the upcoming weeks. We will meet three Tuesdays in a row! Due to the holidays, our December meeting dates do not follow the normal second and fourth Tuesday schedule.
Please mark your calendars. We will meet this Tuesday, November 27th, next Tuesday, December 4th, and the following Tuesday, December 11th.
The Green S.T.E.M. Club has adopted two sea turtles through the Sea Turtle Conservancy. These turtles were released from the coast of Florida, and have satellite tracking devices on their shells. We will be able to follow our new friends to see where they travel!
Mrs. Rodriguez's group has adopted Pirate Patty!
Mrs. Owen's group has adopted Peach!
Follow this link to see where are turtle friends are currently traveling!
Here is a picture of what the front and back our STEM Club shirts will look like! Click on the image above to view a bigger picture.
Remember the price is $8.00. A portion of the proceeds from T-Shirt purchases will go back to the STEM Club to aide with supplies and activities we will do this year. Parents are welcome to buy shirts as well!
Fourth and fifth grade members, please return your forms and money to Mrs. Rodriguez
Second and third grade members, please return your forms and money to Mrs. Owen
We had a very successful first meeting! We learned the rules of the STEM Club, and got a little dirty today in the flower beds and garden. The front of the school is looking somewhat better now that we have pulled some weeds out of the flower beds, but we are thinking we can pretty it up some more! We are also excited to start composting, as well as continue growing herbs in our garden in the back of the school.
A flyer went home today regarding T-Shirts. We are planning to get some screen printed club T-Shirts, to show off our pride, and get people talking about STEM. The shirts are $8 each. Parents are welcome to purchase shirts for themselves as well. A portion of your purchase will go back to the STEM Club to assist in buying more supplies for upcoming activities/events.
Our next meeting is October 23rd. In honor of fall, we will be doing some exciting science and math activities involving pumpkins!
Welcome back to school, Springwood Owls! We are so excited to start another year of The Green S.T.E.M. Club!
New this year: 2nd and 3rd grade students will be invited to participate! Yay! Mrs. Owen will head our 2nd and 3rd grade portion of the club, while Mrs. Rodriguez heads the 4th and 5th grade side. Both groups will work collaboratively on school-wide projects and events!
Invitations and more information regarding changes to the club will be coming soon.
Yesterday was our very last Green S.T.E.M. Club meeting for the 2011-2012 School Year! We had a wonderful turn-out of both present and past members, and an overwhelming amount of cupcakes and juice boxes. Thank you so much to all of the parents who sent in treats. We appreciate you!
The rockets were AMAZING! We had five rockets all together; two of which had eggs in them! Once the egg rockets went up, the egg separated from the rocket, and flew back down to Earth on a parachute. As with any space mission, it was a risky flight, and we did suffer some losses. One rocket is resting peacefully in the trees at Springwood, an egg on a parachute is also watching over all of our fourth and fifth grade students from a tree on the back of the playground. And, somebody in the neighborhood behind our school is probably wondering how an egg on a parachute got in their yard!
Here are some pictures from our celebration yesterday. Thank you to all who participated in The Green S.T.E.M. Club this year! We had a "BLAST"!
Attention: All Green S.T.E.M. Club Members, both past and present!
Remember we are having our end of the year party Wednesday, April 25th. We will have a rocket launch, and enjoy goodies.
Remember to return your form to Mrs. Rodriguez to let us know if you are planning to attend, and what items you will be bringing for everybody to enjoy.
Yesterday our S.T.E.M. Club members completed a Civil Engineering activity. Each group had to use a single sheet of paper and a 12 inch piece of tape to design and build a free-standing structure. The structure had to stay upright for at least 30 seconds with no support. The picture below shows the finished products.
Our S.T.E.M. Club members worked hard turning what looked like a box full of dirt in the back of the school, into a lovely herb garden. We can't wait to see how they grow (and taste them, too!)
It has definitely been a while since we have updated the blog! We have been up to lots of fun and exciting things!
We finished Session 2 with the wonderful Egg Drop Experiment, and learning about aerodynamics with paper airplanes. Pictures will be coming soon. (Mrs. Owen's personal computer is having some issues at the moment, so as soon as we get that straightened out, the pictures will be posted.)
We are now in the final S.T.E.M. Club Session: Session 3! We have a few new folks joining us, and some very familiar faces with us again this time!
We have met three times, so far. The first meeting, we cleaned our mealworm/beetle habitats, and explored their life cycle some more. Our second meeting, we planted some herbs in our garden in back of the school. We are looking forward to watching these grow! Last week, we extended our paper plane activity by engineering our own paper airplane designs! We worked together in groups to see whose planes could go the furtherest. We found the way you throw the plane (or the force you apply to it) has a big affect on how far the plane will fly, too! (Not just the design!)
Check out this video we watched before we put our engineering minds to work. It's the new world record paper plane!
Yesterday, we learned all about aquifers. We talked about the different layers of the ground, and how groundwater is stored. We used gummy bears, chocolate chips, and crushed cookies to represent the sand and gravel found deep in the earth. We then "made it rain" using Sprite (which represented our groundwater.) We "protected" our groundwater with a confining layer (ice cream) then added more gravel and sand and soil (sprinkles).
Next, we put a few drops of food coloring into our aquifer. This represents pollution. At first it didn't do much but set on top of the confining layer. However, once we "dug a well" (put a straw into our aquifer), and started "pumping the well" we noticed the pollution started seeping down into our groundwater! YUCK! The it "rained" again, and the pollution spread EVERYWHERE!
So what did we learn??? To protect our Earth, of course! It is so easy to pollute our drinking water, so we need to be extra careful.
For some reason, Smilebox and our blog do not want to communicate! I have tried and tried, and I just can't get them to work! So... click STEM Club Pictures to see some recent pictures from our last couple of meetings. Hopefully that will work!
Welcome Winter Session of S.T.E.M. Club! We are so excited you all have joined us! We have had two meetings already, and are looking forward to many more in the next few weeks!
Pictures from our last two meetings will be up on the blog soon. We are planning to make our S.T.E.M. Club T-shirts next week. After your T-shirts are made, please be sure to wear them to S.T.E.M. Club on meeting days. We want to show our spirit!
Just a reminder to parents: We do meet every Wednesday after school. Pick-up is in front of the school at 4:00. If you are late, we do have to send your child to EDEP. We will try to call and contact you if that happens. Behavior is important in S.T.E.M. Club, as our time together is limited, and we do a lot of things that require very specific directions.
We are glad to have you, and can't wait to continue working on many more new and exciting projects! Don't forget to save those lunch scraps for the composting bin, and get your friends to do the same!
