Today in science class, we had the STEM challenge of building our own ‘Canadarm’.
The Canadarm is an important Canadian space innovation!
After Mr McCoy gave us a brief lesson about the Canadarm and how it moves and functions, students were put into teams to engineer their own mini Canadarms! We designed and started to build today! They had amazing ideas! Great creative problem solving skills!
In Science class, we are learning about the earth’s, moon’s, and sun’s positions and how they create solar and lunar eclipses, the seasons, and even ocean tides!
On Friday, we built a model that demonstrates how the earth moves around the sun, and the moon moves around the earth. With it, we can show the alignment of a solar and lunar eclipse.
We’ve got another STEM activity in science coming up, and we need plastic container lids! Just the lids! If you have margarine, yoghurt, sour cream… Those are the lids we need! Size doesn’t matter. It’ll just mean we’ll make propellers of all sizes!
Please send them in ASAP. As soon as we have enough, we can start designing and building!
Thanks so much for helping!
Enjoy some videos of our really cool ‘Exploding Pumpkins’ activity!
Students measured height, width, circumference, and the thickness of the shell once it exploded! Plus we kept track of how many elastics it took! We will be graphing this information in math class next!
The rockets that travelled the farthest:
Ananya 153 ft
Tejas 152 ft
Larry 132 ft
Tony and Kaka tied for fourth place with 122 ft.
The students enjoyed designing and building their rockets. We tried to incorporate what we’ve been learning about lift and drag into our designs. We considered wing shape, flight controls, weight distribution, materials… There was a lot of wonderful critical thinking going on!
As he was measuring and laying out his plans for his wings, Faraz said, “I feel like I’m a real engineer!”
We’ve planned an amazing Data Management activity this Friday – where we explode pumpkins!
We need pumpkins to do this, though!
Please consider bringing in a nice medium-sized pumpkin! No carved jack-o-lanterns, please. It won’t work.
After we do our math/STEM activities, all pumpkin pieces will be donated to a goat farm – where we will be making some goats pretty happy with a delicious meal! Nothing will be wasted!
We are designing and building bottle rockets in class, and we need 710ml plastic bottles!
Please look for some clean, empty 710ml plastic bottles and send them to school!
This is a fantastic STEM activity where the students will be using their understanding of flight to make modifications for their rockets. Then, Mr Osborne is going to help us set them off in the school yard! We’ll get to see whose design goes the farthest!
