Kindergarten

We started off our year with a discussion about making good choices in STEM. Then we practiced a few of those good choices (sharing, helping our classmates clean up,...) and worked our creativity muscles by building our names! Students were given their name and a basket full of miscellaneous materials: straws, popsicle sticks, string, paper, beads, and more. Using these items, students had to get creative and build the letters in their name! Not only did we have fun, Mrs. McKibben practiced learning our names as well. 

We kicked off our first story time STEM building task with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, a classic story about a coconut tree and our alphabet!  The problem in our story is that the coconut tree was not strong enough to hold all of the letters. Our students were challenged to design and build a tree to hold all of the letters using only toilet paper rolls and popsicle sticks. They had to collaborate with their partner, share materials, and work hard to build a structure that would work! Check us out below.

Kindergarten had our first STEM stations the other day! We worked at two stations: one was a teamwork and building station and the other challenged our creativity. 

In Ten Apples Up on Top, our main characters compete to see who can stack the most apples up on top of their heads.  However, in the end, the apples fall down. Our students identified this problem and decided if the characters had something sticky, their apples might not fall. Then, with a partner, students worked together to stack up as many "apples" as they could using our "something sticky"--play dough.  It was more difficult than we originally thought and really gave our hands a good workout! 

Spiders are fantastic engineers. They build webs to live and catch their food with. We decided to see if our Kindergartners could be as effective engineers as the spider! 

We read The Five Little Pumpkins, and in our story, the five little pumpkins fall off the gate! We used our creative thinking and teamwork skills to build a brand new gate that all five pumpkins could fit on. After working at this goal for awhile, we had a brand new goal: instead of five little pumpkins, now we had to build a gate for just one BIG pumpkin. How would our gate change? Could we persevere enough to be successful? Check us out below! 

We read Ten Timid Ghosts and together solved the mystery of the ghosts being scared out of their own house. Students were challenged to build a house using linking cubes that their ghost would fit inside of and be able to stand up in. We had so many unique, creative houses. We discussed how each of us have different ideas, but all of our ideas are valuable! 

Next up in Kindergarten we discussed how choosing the right material to build with matters. Students read The Great Turkey Race and were challenged to design and build a cage to hold those sneaky turkeys inside! However, they were able to build three different cages using three different materials - toilet paper rolls and paper, popsicle sticks and clothespins, and Magnatiles. We discussed at the beginning how one material might be easier than others to build with. Lots of our students thought Magnatiles would be the easiest material to build their turkey cage. However, after having the opportunity to build with all three materials, many of our friends changed their minds and decided that toilet paper rolls and paper in fact was the easiest! 

In Mooseltoe, a story of holiday mindfulness and mishaps, the moose family has a big problem: father moose forgets the tree! Because of this, our Kindergartners have to work with their partners to build a tree that will stand alone around the outside of the moose using only pipe cleaners and beads for decoration. We came up with a plan, followed our plans (with a few changes here and there), then we all had a chance to share our ideas with our classmates. We all agreed - even ideas that are different from ours can be good!