I hope everyone had a great spring break. While I was away, I picked up a couple of maps from the places I visited. When I returned back to school I showed the students an NYC subway map and they were thrilled. Mrs. Garrabrant and I searched our houses for additional maps and the more we brought in, the more excited the students became. We decided to listen to their excitement and run with it! Maps fit right in with our study on Transportation because they do help us get from "one location to another." Now with your help we have several types of maps including: subway, train, road, airplane, city, country, hotel, museum, amusement parks, and many more. Below you can see some photos of how engaged the students were just simply exploring different types of maps. 
The students asked may questions about maps and decided they wanted to become cartographers. We made a list of what they would like to map, and it came down to mapping our school and our playground. As you can see 12 students wanted to map our school and 17 wanted to map our playground (these numbers include teachers). After they voted, we made a short list of what needs to be included on our map. You can see that documented in the lower left of the photograph.
This week we have also been working through a STEM lesson. If you are not familiar with STEM it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. To give you some background, last year I was encouraged by our principal Ms. Hall and superintendent Dr. Clifford to apply to be a Fellow for the Dayton Regional STEM center. So, I applied, interviewed, and was selected to write STEM curriculum for pre-k and kindergarten. Twice a month I meet at the Dayton Regional STEM center in Dayton with a group of educators as well as college professors and engineers to write the curriculum. It has been an incredible learning experience for me as an educator of which has enhanced my teaching and the experiences I have been able to provide for the students.
One of my duties for being a Fellow of the STEM center is to "pilot" or teach one of the lessons that has been written. This week I began piloting the first lesson we wrote called Humpty: "Stay on the Wall!" One of my team members actually re-wrote a version of Humpty Dumpty and turned it into a book. Ask the students to share the story. It's very cute and creative. Basically, Humpty guards the castle walls but keeps falling of the wall due to inclement weather. In this lesson, the final engineering design challenge is to develop a way for Humpty to stay on the wall even through inclement weather. Below you will see just a FEW photos from our first 5 lessons.
Ian and Atticus are counting 10 groups of 10 legos to help make Humpty's wall.
Kristen and Maesyn help construct Humpty's wall.
One of our first lessons was to see how wind and water affects Humpty on his wall.
Kingston notices that they both resulted in a fall from Humpty.
Students also explored wind by blowing through straws trying to move objects that were different weights. Below you see Allen easily blowing a piece of paper. You also see his documentation sheet that we all filled out with our experiences of whether the objects were easy to blow, difficult to blow or unable to blow.
Next, students explored materials and their properties. As you can see there is several different types of materials. Next week for the students design challenge, students will be using these materials to design a way where Humpty doesn't keep falling off he wall.
Below you can see Thalin manipulating a piece of string to explore it's properties.
Later in the week, students took the materials and sorted them by their properties. Below you can see a student sorting their materials by what can and cant't be torn.
Next week we will be completing this lesson. The students will all be designing a way to keep Humpty safe on his wall. I look forward to seeing the students work through the Engineering Design Process to help solve Humpty's problem. Check back next week to see the students progress.
We added some beanbags and now the children use it as a quiet reading spot.
They love it!
Have a great week!
Mrs. Atkin
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