Weeks like these ...

...are what we love best! STEAM (Science Technology Art Engineering and Math) is a big buzzword in education these days, but these subjects truly are woven into the fabric of our academic lives here at Seabury. Though this week was full of "events," a week like this is not untypical.

SCIENCE:

We strutted our science stuff at the Science Fair, exploring questions such as whether exercise improves memory, if air pressure affects how high a ball bounces, which elements can make a sugar cube glow in the dark, what makes a bristle brush bot go fastest, whether or not you can create a water barrier with different temperatures of water, and what liquids and temperature produce the best cat grass:

We even had one student exploring temperature and conductivity -- you should have heard him explaining resistors and ohms to the middle school students. Ah, the passion!

TECHNOLOGY (and ART):

One of the best things about having a small class is having a computer for every student in my classroom, and aside from our routine keyboarding skills practice and some research on Westward Expansion report topics, we also spent some time looking at this website to learn more about Lakota Winter Counts and creating some of our own:
http://wintercounts.si.edu

ENGINEERING:

We started our fourth Westward Ho! Engineering challenge today.  The challenge: Build a barrel that can hold water using clothespins, a cardboard tube, 2 rubber bands and a small plastic square. These need time to dry, so we'll test them Monday and see what we learn!

ARTS:

We are doing an author study on Roald Dahl, so we went to see a fabulous performance of James and the Giant Peach at the Tacoma Musical Playhouse:

http://thesubtimes.com/2016/03/15/tmp-family-theaters-james-is-peachy-keen/

Many of us loved the awful, audacious aunts, Sponges and Spiker, because they were SO funny. (I loved their matching striped tights and wristlets). We also loved Grasshopper because he was so nice, and one student wrote that Worm was her favorite character because he was a scaredy cat and it was really funny when he lost all his shyness and danced on the peach. It WAS quite a fun number! What a fun introduction to the magic and delight of Roald Dahl's world!


And, finally, last but NEVER least,

MATH: 

We started off the week with Pi Day, which is about a lot more than just eating pie here. We did a little circular measurement -- focused, of course, on finding the circumference and radius of an old wagon (or maybe an old tractor?) wheel (since we're in the middle of our Westward Ho! Oregon Trail simulation) and comparing the ratio to other circular objects. It is fun to see these 1st-3rd graders grappling with real problems like this and trying to make sense of what Pi really represents. For some, it was more of an exercise in precise measurement, but many were able to grasp the concept as we compared all the different measurements at the end of our work and noticed how many were so close to 3.

And we DO enjoy our pie, as well as our pi!

Yes, another wonderful, jam-packed week of fun and amazing learning and discovery at Seabury!

Walk a mile (or 15) in a Pioneer's shoes!

 We decided to walk a mile to see what it would have been like for the Pioneers, who made most of the journey, we learned, walking along next to their wagons, not riding in them (too bumpy!)

We stayed in a line, like we would in a wagon train. We passed 'Fort Broberg," but did not stop to trade or buy supplies.

 We even saw a wild prairie dog!

 Here we are at our final destination.

 We timed ourselves, and it took about 40 minutes. When we got back, many students figured out that if we walked 15 miles, which is how far we traveled in our simulation, we would have been walking for 10 hours!

 We also used a map scale to figure out how long the trail is. 

 Each 100 miles was 1 centimeter, so using a ruler, we found the trail to be 2,000 miles long!

That's a LOT of walking!

Life on the Frontier

Last week we rode our magic time machine (aka our school bus) back to the late-1800s to visit the cabin of Job Carr, one of Tacoma's earliest non-native settlers. Carr himself travelled out west in a covered wagon, much as we have been doing in our Westward Ho! simulation, and we really enjoyed experiencing a little slice of life in Tacoma as it would have been back then.

We started by singing a few old-time songs, and even hearing a dulcimer played. The kids always love a rousing round of "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain." Whoa, Babe!

We made some quilt squares (the easy way - gluing cloth scraps onto paper), which we later turned into a little classroom quilt.

We played with some frontier-era wooden toys:

We even got to try on some frontier fashions:

 These bonnets were so cute, Mrs. Towne and I had to join in the fun!

All in all, a wonderful step back in time.