Bryn Mawr Pre-First Blog: Nouns, Measuring, Engineering and a Field Trip!

It has been a busy 3 days in our classroom, your daughters should be exhausted! We started our week by learning about nouns. We read the book "A Mink, a Fink, a Skating Rink" and then brainstormed different nouns.

The girls then had to categorize nouns into either a person, place or thing.

In math, we have been discussing the different ways of measuring. The girls were introduced to both standard and non-standard units of measurements and we also compared the weights of objects. Yesterday, the girls were introduced to capacity. We put the girls into small groups and they were given various containers from which they had to make estimates on how many of each container would fill a bucket with sand.

The girls then ventured out to the sandbox where they made actual measurements with their group. Many of the groups were thrilled that they made accurate estimates.

A big happening in our classroom is the start of our new engineering unit. We started this unit by gathering ideas about engineers and technology (they believed that anything considered "technology" had to have a button, amazing). The girls were shown a key and told that it was technology--by working together, they discovered that anything that was created to solve a problem was "technology". The girls were then divided into small groups and given a mystery bag. Inside each bag was an item that they usually would not consider to be "technology". As a group, the girls had to answer several questions, including, "What does your object do, what problem does it solve, and what material is it made of?" The group then reported back to the whole class on what they discovered about their object. Make sure you ask your daughter what technology she found in her bag!