As spring rolls along, we’ve had all grade levels help revive our aeroponic tower garden. The Kindergarteners planted seeds in January, which grew large enough to transfer into the tower garden in early March. We currently have beans, tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, and lettuce growing. As time allows, everyone has been doing their best bumblebee impression, helping to hand pollinate the cucumber flowers, which will hopefully culminate in a small harvest in the coming months.
Kindergarteners have taken on a variety of challenges. We worked on finger knitting in January and February, which requires incredible focus and hand-eye coordination to successfully complete all of the steps. More recently, they began a joint project with the Middle Schoolers, where they drew and colored an animal or character, which the Middle Schoolers are currently working on sewing into stuffies as gifts. They’ve asked many times to see how theirs are progressing, but it will be a fun surprise once they are finished in the coming weeks.
Lower El also began the year with knitting. We began with the basics, learning finger knitting and then progressing to small circular looms, which the Third Graders made themselves. Once everyone was proficient with the small circular looms, we began on the larger circular looms, which resulted in a variety of completed projects such as pillowcases, scarves, bags, and arm warmers. Most recently, Lower El has been very interested in what their older peers are working on in Robotics class, so we’ve worked on various Lego challenges that utilize the same obstacles and lessons, such as ramps and our paper airplane launcher.
Upper El has just completed a larger mask project, choosing an animal and utilizing cardboard as the main material. They’ve been passionate about the details and final touches for the last few weeks, and the results are impressive. In Robotics prior to Spring Break, they were challenged to make the longest car possible in teams of 2-3 students. We then connected all of the cars together to make one incredibly long car, totaling over 24 feet in length. It was exciting to see their creation make its way down the hallway. Since Spring Break, Robotics has focused on smaller, seemingly simple challenges that require very innovative solutions, such as making a vehicle go up the steepest ramp possible, creating a gondola to go up a tight line, and using gear ratios to make the fastest car possible.
Middle Schoolers are in the midst of a number of projects. A furniture design challenge presented in February has progressed from sketches to 3D modeling and 3D printing, then refining to finalize dimensions with a preliminary design cut on the laser cutter. The final step will be a ⅓ scale model version, which will have all of the needed detail to assemble as if it were a real piece of furniture. At the moment, they are busy working to turn the Kindergartener’s drawings into stuffies. This involves cutting pattern pieces before cutting fabric to ensure the proportions and details are correct. They are now working to get those pieces sewn up, stuffed, and adding any final touches to make the Kindergartener’s drawings come to life. In Robotics, they’ve spent some time brushing up on some construction and coding basics with the Lego Spike kits and some more advanced tutorials. Using that as a foundation, additional challenges have been presented to push their creativity and come up with innovative solutions.
