Special Guest!

This week Wei Li (Rosie's mom) came in to talk about China, the country she comes from. We first found China on the globe and noticed that it is shaped like a rooster! Wei also showed us what a Chinese passport looks like compared to a U.S. passport. Kids were excited to see Chinese writing in children's books Wei brought, particularly the familiar story of the Three Little Pigs.  Wei also told us that in China, along with using a pen or pencil to write, students learn to use a special calligraphy brush to make the Chinese characters in this beautiful art of writing.

Wei showed us a picture of a Chinese dragon and she brought a small dragon sculpture to pass around.  She told us that unlike European dragons which are quite greedy and fire breathing, Chinese dragons had homes underwater and brought water to villages in need at the bidding of the Jade Emperor.  Wei also brought beautiful silk weavings from China. Students were surprised to learn that this soft, smooth material is actually produced by silk worms!

We got to see intricate and artistic Chinese knots.Their red color is a symbol for good luck.  And because they Chinese character for fish (yu 鱼) is pronounced the same as the Chinese character for surplus(yu 余),  the fish symbol is frequently used to symbolize the wish for abundance. This makes the fish shaped bank so very appropriate!

Wei demonstrated the way to use chopsticks. Many of the students have tried their hands using these utensils, but picked up some good pointers on how to be more successful with them. And at the end of her visit, Wei played the "Jasmine Flower" song the kids have been learning in Music class with Mr. Roper in its original Chinese. The kids were very excited to sing along!

Enjoy the pictures below. Thank you Wei!

Bridges!

This week we did our culminating engineering project: building bridges!  Following the Engineering Design Process (Ask, Imagine, Plan, Create, Improve) to design and create a bridge that would cross a 15 inch span between our thick dictionary abutments, was stable enough for a matchbox car to make it to the other side safely, and be strong enough to support up to 200 pennies.

This challenge tested both their skills and creativity as an engineer as well as their skills as a collaborative member of a team. The materials available were sheets of paper, straws, craft sticks, paper clips, string and pieces of tape. Each material had a cost value assigned to it so that kids could keep track of how expensive their bridge was to build.

After the bridges were built, they were put to the test! Each bridge was first scored on how expensive it was to build. The next test was the stability test. Bridges were then tested to see how many successful times, out of 4 tries, a matchbox car rolled from one side of the bridge to the other. Third, the bridges were tested to see how much weight it could hold (in pennies). The strongest bridges could support over 200 pennies, while others could not support more than 10 pennies.

Once each team had the results of their test, they discussed ways they might redesign their bridge to improve its cost, stability, strength or all 3. We noticed that while the bridges demonstrated a wide range of costs, stability and strength levels, ALL groups worked very collaboratively. Pictures of each group and their original bridge are shown below.

Special Guest!

This week we had a special guest visitor - Georgia Gojmerac-Leiner, who talked to the students about Croatia, the country she lived in until she was 16. After locating Croatia on the map, Georgia shared lots of stories about her life growing up there, including a very endearing poem about a cow she tended. She brought examples of weavings from Croatia which were linen made out of flax. They had many beautiful designs and colors. Georgia also showed us the Croatian alphabet and we repeated the names of the letters. She then passed around a book written in Croatian that the kids enjoyed looking at. Georgia and Eden sang a traditional Croatian song together which we really enjoyed. And Eden passed around photo albums of his trips to Croatia. Georgia gave us a packet of flax seeds to put into our garden and we have high hopes for a good crop!