Monday, April 25, 2016

Tinker and Techxploration

The girls enjoyed the Lower School Tinker and Techxploration Fair on April 18th.  The girls had an opportunity to explore and tinker with 10 of the latest technology innovations and gadgets. 
 
The Beam is an experimental telepresence robot. It lets you move around and talk to people, even when you’re not with them in person. The Beam uses WiFi, cameras and sensors to move around.

Google Cardboard is a virtual reality set of glasses. What’s virtual reality? It’s a way to experience something through our computers that doesn’t really exist.
    
You can connect the MaKey MaKey to a computer and then to just about anything.
  
Makeup Genius uses augmented reality code to put makeup on your face!

 
Robot turtles is a super fun game that will also teach you how to think like a computer scientist.
  
Drones are machines that fly themselves.
   
Alexa is an artificially intelligent bot that you can have a conversation with.

  
Leap Motion allows you to control a computer through motion rather than a keyboard or mouse, that’s called a “gestural interface.”

   
The Spirograph was created by a mathematician in the late 1800s. He used it to calculate the area of curves. But a British engineer soon realized that the Spirograph could also be used to create really pretty drawings.








Friday, April 8, 2016

It's Spring!...we guess?

Although spring weather has eluded us for this past week of April, we are doing everything in our power to encourage it to show its beautiful face.  We read It's Spring by Linda Glaser and brainstormed as many spring words as we could.  Then the girls used our words to create a poem called, "Hello Spring, Goodbye Winter". 



In math, we focused on determining if different shapes and objects have a line of symmetry.  The girls were given several different cut out shapes to fold and see if they were symmetric or not.  They then went back to their seats to complete a packet as a class.  



Your girls are all about to grow green thumbs.  The girls were introduced to their newest science unit which will focus on seeds and plants.  We read From Seed to Plant by Gail Gibbons and each student was given a plain flower pot to paint and make completely "theirs."  Next week we will be digging in the dirt and planting seeds.  Over the next few weeks we will be observing our plants as we feed them water and let them grow in the sun.



Today in science, we labeled and discussed the different parts of a plant.  Next, we placed plates full of of edible plant parts in the middle of each table. The girls worked as a group to select a plant part from each plate and sorted them into the correct box on their sheet. The girls recorded their observations and had a great time eating all of the various parts.



Many thanks to Kari Kelly who was our Mystery Reader this week!


Our girls were given the wonderful opportunity to visit Adam Barney's 8th grade science class yesterday.  The 8th grade girls had an assignment to teach our pre-firster's different lessons that they had been working on in class.  One lesson was focused on potential vs. kinetic energy, and another group taught the girls all about how power, speed and weight affect movement.