Auction Sneak Peek....

Here is a preview of what the Bumblebees will be offering for the Seabury Auction coming this April...

Thank you to the many of you who helped put it together!!

Going on a Shape Hunt

This week, we are examining geometric and organic shapes in our world. We have had a lot of exposure working with various shapes with the pattern and building blocks, and we will further investigate how we use shapes in our world, and why some are more used than others in buildings. This morning, we went on a shape hunt to collect data on the types of shapes at school.

Our investigation question was: What is the most common shape at school?

Our hypothesis:
2  students thought squares

2 students thought rectangles

3 students thought rhombus

1 student thought trapazoid

Here are our results:

YK rectangle was the most.  I found them outside and inside there was so many.

RH: I found most trapazoids because I found them on the back table with the pattern and building blocks.

MK: I got a lot of diamonds because I found them everywhere.

AL: I have 12 diamonds, 13 squares and 13 triangles and 6 rectangles.

IS: I go the most rectangles.  The second most was circles, 3^rd most squares and least of triangles.

IK: I got most of rectangles and least of triangles bedcause I got 0, six rectangles and 2 squares, 0 triangles and 5 circles.

VM: I have most of rectangles (47) I have little triangles but it wasn’t the most. There was 14.

ZK: I got three triangles, 16 squares and 9 circles.

Discoveries:

Triangle was hard to find because there wasn’t any triangles in the classroom. We looked everywhere.

Rectangle was easy to find because there are a lot of things that are rectangle.

Rectangles were more popular than triangles and squares.

The House the Wolf Couldn't Blow Down

Today, we integrated one of our favorite classic tales, The Three Pigs, with an engineering project. The task was to build a house with a variety of materials that the big bad (hairdryer) wolf couldn't blow down. For 45 minutes, the Bumblebees tried and tested several different materials.

Before building, we talked about how we can make a strong house.  Some of their responses included:

• GG: with cement
• SA: bricks on top, wood on the bottom
• YK: bricks and cement to hold it
• IK: bricks on the very bottom, metal on bottom, wood on top and maybe paint
• RH: woods for floor, bricks and cement for house
• VM: wood on bottom, bricks in the middle and cement on top
• IS: bamboo floor, glass windows, bricks and wood for the rest

 Here is the process in which the students were exploring and testing materials.

Here are some of their discoveries the students were making during this project:

      If I put clay on I can make it strong so it's better. The roof is going to be made out of sticks.

      I'm making this house for the Big Bad Wolf. It's super strong. I'm using blocks and bricks like the 3rd little pig.

     My design is blocks and bricks with clay. The clay is sticking it.

     I'm putting clay around the wood so it won't fall. It's like a belt buckle. It belts it in so it won't fall down.

     I'm connecting cubes with playdough because playdough is the strongest sticky stuff.

A busy January

We have had a very busy month!  We started swimming lessons twice a week, performed in our Winter Performance, conducted a science experiment about melting ice, currently building a rainforest model while researching animals, and kept our math skills up with Math Night.  Below are some highlights of what we are doing!

The next few pictures we experimented with how to make ice melt faster.  We used a control and for variables we added oil, sugar and salt. We observed the changes in our science notebooks.

RH is measuring the room

This activity has sparked great engineering and problem solving. They use wooden planks to create ramps.

AL working on a complex problem involving division

Our 3-d Rainforest model in process

Can't see his work in the picture, but IS was decomposing the number 15 by finding a pattern (11+4, 12+3, etc)