The Great Penguin Presentation

Nolan was suppose to have his Penguin Presentation last Thursday morning in the STEM lab but due to the snow cancellations, it was postponed until Friday morning.  Then we had a two hour delay on Friday morning so they told the students to go to their rooms and then they'd all come back down to the STEM lab where parents would come in and join them.  When I walked in, I saw Nolan and his partner Milo standing patiently in front of their poster board over on the other side of the room.  Nolan seemed to be looking around the room searching for me and as soon as he saw me, he got the biggest smile on his face.  

I tried to be very "professional" when I approached so that they could do their verbal presentation and then I asked a few questions giving them time to give me their answers.  They both were really prepared and did a great job.  I was actually quite impressed with the work of these two first graders.  

After they did their board presentation, they took me over to the lego robot penguin that they had built and programmed.  Apparently it was suppose to make a penguin call of some sort depending on how they programmed it but I couldn't hear the differences because of all of the noise in the lab.  They seemed excited that it was working though so I guess it was doing what it was suppose to.

Good job boys.  I love to see you learning new things. 

Now it's time to move on to the solar system....

Marissa's Wax Museum

This past Friday was the Wax Museum at the STEM Academy where Marissa goes to school.  

Marissa worked all of February on a report of a person in history from the era of WWII for a school project.  She chose Katherine Hepburn and wrote a paper on her and then this past Friday, the students were asked to portray their characters in front of parents and other students in the school.

I arrived about halfway through the hour time and caught Marissa performing through the lab door.

And then I caught the end of her presentation when I went into the room.

It's hard to believe, but there are only 10 weeks left in the school year and it's been so fun to see all of the new things that Marissa has learned this year.

Marissa's School Presentation

Friday was such a busy day.  

As I mentioned in the previous post, we started our day at the eye doctor after dropping Marissa and Morgan at school.  Then, after going home for a quick lunch, we were back at Marissa's school for her school presentation which lasted about 30 minutes.  Then I left her school to go pick up 18 pizzas before returning to her school again where the kids quickly devoured all of the pizzas during her 6th grade Valentine's Party.  Believe me, we were ready to get out of there for a long three day weekend!!

But anyway...  back to her presentation.

She's been learning about WWII and more specifically, the Holocaust.  As part of the assignment, she was to design a symbol that represented something meaningful from the Holocaust time period.  She used 3-D printer software online to make her design and then her teacher printed it off using their printers at school.  Even though her design called for several different colors, they had to make it all black (and much smaller to scale) because it takes so much time to print them all.

This is her design printed off in all black.

Then she brought it home and started painting it.

This is a red tulip...

...and the prison walls.

In her own words, this is why Marissa designed the symbol that she did.

(I may be a bit biased as her Mom, but I thought she really did a good job thinking through so many different elements and the feelings that were involved.)

While we were at the school, she also showed us the poster that she made about an American celebrity during the same time frame.  As you can see, she chose Katherine Hepburn and although her poster is already complete, she's now working on memorizing her speech for the upcoming wax museum that her class will put on.  

She already said her speech for our family and we were joking with her about why she chose Katherine because she certainly doesn't share the same wholesome family values that we hope to instill in Marissa.  In fact, she was quite the "rebel".  LOL

And finally, we were able to see the robot that Marissa designed and then put into the parade.

Each student was to choose a country and then learn as much about the culture and government and way of life from that country as possible.  Marissa chose Haiti and had a great time designing her box.  Then they put the box over top a robot that they also had to design and it "paraded" around on the black line through the halls.  (And just to let you know, not everyone's robot was programmed correctly so we had a few "runaways" but thankfully Marissa's followed the line as it was suppose to do.)

I love seeing what Marissa is working on this year at the STEM academy and I also love that we are invited in each quarter to see their work.  She's really enjoying these projects and it's fun to see her creative mind at work.

Another STEM video

This past week Marissa's class had to design and name their own roller coasters.  Here is the link to the classroom video.

Sixth Grade STEM Projects

Marissa is really excited about some of the projects she has been working on at school in her STEM class.  Here are some of the things they have worked on during the first quarter of school.

Click here to see the video.