Stella Stella olla quack quack quack

 

Science club today!

 

I am really loving science club, such wonderful teachers.  Today the topic was Mars.  They had a 20 minute talk about mars and then it was project time.  Todays project was fantastic to say the least.  The kids had a kit of supplies that they had to build a mars rover with.  This rover was then dropped from above the instructers head onto a mountain on mars.  The goal was for the rover to remain upright, so the solar panel was intact on top, so you could run all of your cool equipment.  They talked about all the cool equipment and what neat things you would like to discover and find out about mars. 

 

The kids were divided into 9 groups of about 5 kids each, they were told what resources were available to them, but they had to first discuss as a team, and come up with a plan and put in onto paper first.  They then took these plans to the funder, to see if they could get money for their resources.  If they had a sound plan, they were given their bag of resources.  In the planning phase they could go look at pictures of actual rovers and could go and look at what types of resources were available.  Parents were strictly prohibited from helping and the students were told that if a parent was giving advise or trying to help the kids were supposed to tell them to get lost!  I got told to take a hike once :)

 

In the supply kit there were pipe cleaners, 2 nuts, popcycle sticks, table tenis ball, eraser, tape, tie strap, and I am sure a couple of more things.  They had to build this into their rover.  It was amazing to see all these homeschoolers take this on!  There were only a few out of the 45 kids who were a little overwhelmed at working with others.  It was neat to see all the kids take on different roles and work together.

 

Next they got to come and watch them all drop, if they succeded then they could make a discovery.  They would then read their discovery out to the rest of the group.  Full of neat facts about mars they could discover if they landed their rover. 

Nathan was really enjoying the collaboration

gigi is checking out the pictures



SFU teacher in beside the planet mars, she is dropping rovers...

After science we played a bunch of chess, gigi only played 2 games but she went outside with anika and climbed some trees.