STEM Challenge #1: Fruit race!

Hello children!

This year we're going to learn with STEM Challenges!

The idea for the first STEM Challenge for 6th Grade has been taken from the great Kerry Tracy, from Feel Good Teaching (thanks for sharing ;)), and is called FRUIT RACE.

Materials:

Students were challenged to build a fruit-balanced device, in teams of 4. This device had to be put on their heads in order to participate in a teams race. Pupils could not touch the fruit while racing.

First-iteration devices

It has been a great opportunity to introduce engineering activities in the primary class.

It is good to do a second iteration, so that student can reflect and improve their initial machines:

Second-iteration devices

And they were our winners in the race:

Congratulations!!!

Hello again!!!

Hello children from Mestre Ignasi Peraire School!

How are you??? Did you have a good holiday? I hope so!

Because I am so happy to start again, I am going to welcome you with a game:

Whose skeletons are these?

#1

Photograph by Margarel Seagull

#2

Photograph by Nick Mann

#3

#4

#5

Post your answers in the comments section. You'll find the solutions next week!

Happy Summer!!!

Heey, Summer holidays have finally arrived!!!

I hope you have a fantastic Summer with your families and friends!

And see you again in September, with loaded batteries and lots of new Science Challenges!

3D Glasses (6th Grade)

Good evening!

Pupils of 6th Grade created our own 3D glasses as a Science project.

What we needed:

• A 3D glasses template (downloaded from Internet)
• A piece of card stock
• Red and blue cellophane
• Scissors
• Glue stick

Remember that the blue cellophane goes on the right eye.

It was easy and we all enjoyed watching 3D books and films.

This type of 3D glasses can be used for watching specially designed images called Anaglyphs.
So, we decided to create our Anaglyph images:

And this was our last Science Project this year. Good job, kids!

Inclined Planes - Marble Run Game (6th Grade)

Good morning!

A great engineering challenge for our students has been the following:

Turn a SHOE BOX into a MARBLE RUN, using INCLINED PLANES.

Choose between building:

- The longest circuit as possible.

- The slowest circuit as possible.

All we needed were:

• craft sticks
• a shoe box / a carboard box
• glue
• scissors
• marbles or small balls

And here you can see some of our games. Great job, kids!

Balloon powered car (6th Grade)

Hello girls and boys!

6th Grade pupils had the following challenge:

"Build a balloon powered LEGO car. It must have 4 wheels and 2 axles."

These are some of the cars they built:

And now, watch them move:

Racing the cars was really fun!

Planes and helicopters (6th Grade)

Hello!

Our 6th Grade pupils continue with their Engineering lessons.

Who thought that building an aeroplane or a helicopter was going to be difficult? Read the following post in order to build these machines in less that 10 minutes!

PLANES

You only need a piece of paper, a straw, scissors and adhesive tape. 

HELICOPTERS

Material needed: a piece of paper, scissors and a paper clip.

Instructions:

 They even organised flying competitions!

Catapults (6th Grade)

Hello everyone!

In 6th Grade, we learn about the Simple Machines. So, we found it a good opportunity to start having some Engineering lessons. To start with, we decided to build a type of LEVER (our 1st studied simple machine) and we chose a CATAPULT:

It was easy and entertaining. We followed the instructions in this video from Experciencia, an amazing STEM website (in Spanish):

Here are some pictures of our catapults: