September in 5R

It was great to meet so many parents at Open House.  

September has been an exciting month that is soon coming to a HOT close!  The cooler temperatures will be a welcome guest in Room 217!  

We started the month of September with an exciting team building activity in the woods. Mr. Clough led us into the woods where we came upon a HUGE spider web.  Our task was to get everyone from one side of the spider web to the other without waking the angry spider who hung above the web!  Do not touch the web or the spider may come swooping down!  Although we failed to get the whole class through safely we learned a lot about communicating with each other!

Our first science unit was an Engineering and Design unit.   We talked a lot about, and practiced, what engineers do.  Below are some photos of some of our engineering tasks.

The Problem:

  Gumdrop Pedestal

You want to keep your book off of the table so it will not get wet.  (You never know when there will be an accidental spill).  You look in your cabinet to build something to accomplish this goal and all you can find are toothpicks and gumdrops.

The Problem:

The Pennies Club are out for a leisurely afternoon on a boat.  Everything was just peachy until the boat sprang a leak and sank!  The only supply they have is a 1 ft by 1 ft piece of aluminum foil.  You need to rescue as many members of the Pennies Club as you can.

The Problem:

A company is designing a new bridge.  They want to get design ideas from the general population, so they decide to hold a contest.  The challenge is to create a bridge using a piece of paper that will hold the most amount of pennies.  

The engineers of 5R worked well together in all of these activities! Tune in next week for pictures of our final engineering task, which was independent. Each student designed and battled with their own catapult! Pictures and reflective comments will appear in our next blog post.