Session One: June 25-July 6, 2018
Theme: Locomotion Commotion!
Field Trip: Oyster Bay Waterfront: Thursday, July 5th. Click here for permission slip
Parent Visitation Day: Friday, July 6th
Citizen Science Activity: Nature’s Notebook
Students will participate in world-wide observations and data collection on animal and plant behavior, structure and function so that any subtle adaptations to the changing climate can be documented and studied by scientists.
- Visitation by Alvin Ailey. An Actor’s Equity Dancer will teach the Physics of Dance and will include teaching our students the Physics of the “Moon Walk.”
News from the Digital Den with Miss Stacey
Our computer wizards had a blast in the Digital Den! This week students helped to create the Digital Den manners manifesto and manipulated games using interactive simple machines. Campers learned how to navigate to our blog so that they can continue their computer skills at home if they wish to. Please visit our blog where student work will be featured as they become more skilled with coding. Students illustrated their learning when they build working simple machines in Minecraft and reinforced their vocabulary with simple machine fortune tellers. Showing how objects can be moved with simple machines ties into our Locomotion Commotion theme and students are learning through play. They will also bring this knowledge with them as they create and code in the robotics and Snappy XO rooms. Stay tuned to see what locomotion coding we will do in Scratch next week!
News from Robotics 1 with Juliana
What a fun week of Robotics we have had so far! Following with our Locomotion Commotion theme, our science campers are learning about concepts of force, motion, energy, and acceleration. We have been getting familiarized with DASH and the Go App and will move onto the PATH app by the end of the week! Our campers have been working beautifully in teams and are really enjoying the teamwork aspect of the course. Some activities we have been doing include relay races, creating their own mazes for their other teams to compete on, and DASH bowling. We will end the week with a super fun experiment where DASH will travel on different inclines and surfaces while the kids will hypothesize what they think the results will be. We are having a blast and I am hearing great feedback on how they are enjoying the activities! Looking forward to more Robotic fun and learning! Next week we will begin the coding/programming portion of the course! Stay tuned!
News from Robotics 2 with Alan
This week, Robotics 2 introduced the campers to a new robotics kit called SnappyXO. Throughout the whole week, our science campers learned the basics of building with SnappyXO, electronics, and programing including how to build a catapult using SnappyXO, how to power a LED with a button or a photocell, and how to program a LED using mBlock3. In every class, students learned through hands-on exercise/group projects and developed teamwork skills by working as a group. Our science campers now have the knowledge to put together a 2-wheel-driver programmable robot car!
News from Engineering with Kyle
Our students this week in Engineering class focused on the basics of locomotion and the engineering design process. We are learning about force, potential energy, energy transfer and how these create an acceleration and velocity on objects. These topics are being applied in fun and creative building activities where the students can test and improve upon their designs.
News from Science with Tina
Welcome to the summer of 2018. This week we will all get to know each other and go over various guidelines for animal handling and the science lab. The theme for this block is Locomotion Commotion, and in keeping with the theme we investigated how water moves through leaves and how different animals move. We experimented to see if there are differences in how each animal moves when hunting, resting playing etc. We learned about our muscles and bones and how they help us move. I am looking forward to working with your children this summer and expect a wonderful summer. Until next week, enjoy the sun!
News from Artistic Design with Jess
For the theme of Locomotion Commotion, the young artists thought about the ways in which all things move- from humans and animals to cars and roller coasters. The campers were first asked to think of three creatures that move in very different ways. They were drawn onto a cut and folded piece of paper, allowing the campers to mix and match the top, middle, and bottom of each creature to form incredible hybrid animals! Our youngest campers explored the idea of moving cars by creating a landscape collage and tiny vehicles on popsicle sticks that can be “driven” through the scene. Our older campers were given a STEAM challenge to build a model roller coaster from plates and cardboard tubes. Their creations were so creative and full of movement!