Updates!

Fourth and Fifth Grade Green STEM Club Members have been very busy researching sea turtles over the past couple of meetings. The Second and Third Grade members also researched sea turtles as well.

At our last meeting, the Second and Third Grade STEM Club members heard a great presentation from our own Kasiyah Rogers about Loggerhead Sea Turtles. She did a lot of research on her own and brought it back to the club to share. We were very surprised to hear over 90% of Loggerhead Sea Turtle births take place in Florida! This made us very aware of how important taking care of our environment and being aware of ways to protect sea turtles is important, given our location!

We then moved onto researching "The Egg Drop." The students are in charge of building some sort of protective vehicle for a raw egg, so that when dropped from a high altitude, the egg will stay in tact and not crack. Our Second and Third Grade members used the laptops to look up materials and design ideas, and then began designing and constructing their own models using materials we had at school. They also came up with lists of other items they may need to bring from home. At our next meeting, we plan to finish building the vehicles, and then testing them! Stay tuned to find out what happens!

 

What Are Our Sea Turtles Up To?

As we mentioned in the beginning of the year, The Green STEM Club has adopted two loggerhead sea turtles. The fourth and fifth grade sea turtle is Pirate Patty. Pirate Patty had been hanging around the southern Florida coast in the first half of the year, but she has been on the move! Her last tracked location shows Pirate Patty was heading toward the Bahamas! Do you think she will go on land?

The second and third grade turtle is named Peach. Peach has been hanging out in the same location, close to our coastline, over the past few months. However, during the holidays, Peach started heading south, further into the Gulf of Mexico. Her last tracked location, though, shows her right back in her regular habitat, where she had been hanging out the past few months. Why do you think she moved so much during the holidays? Why do you think she decided to travel back north, to the same spot she had been hanging out before the break?

To keep track of our turtles, visit http://www.conserveturtles.org/satelliteturtles.php

First STEM Meeting of 2013

The second and third grade STEM Club members kicked off the New Year by constructing catapults! Mrs. Owen handed each group a wire hanger, spoon, rubber bands, and some marshmallows. It was then up to the STEM Club members to try to figure out how to construct a catapult that would launch a marshmallow the farthest distance across the room. Not an easy task! Here are some designs.

After testing their own designs, Mrs. Owen showed the club a design she learned at a workshop over the summer. The groups made models after Mrs. Owen's design, and tested their catapults again to see if their distance improved, or if their original designs faired better. We then had a marshmallow chunking contest using our catapults, where each group faced off against one another.

Cell Party!

At our last December meeting, our second and third grade group and fourth and fifth grade group combined forces to learn all about cells! We made cell cookies to help us understand the parts of a cell. Once your cell cookie was made and your paper was complete, you got to participate in other goodies provided by our STEM Club parents.

Thank you so much to all of you who provided snacks and drinks for that day. We appreciate it!

Cell cookie ingredients!

Completed cell cookie!

Towers

While the second and third grade students were busy building bridges, our fourth and fifth grade friends were building towers with marshmallows and spaghetti noodles! Check out their creations!

London Bridge is Falling Down?

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!

TOMORROW!

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!