Last year Learning Lane did an egg drop STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) project. The students were so very excited that the teachers wanted to provide a similar experience for them this year! Instead of the egg holder, we decided we would have students build their own boat out of random materials. Students in Learning Lane were first placed in multi age groups of 5-6 students. Each student from the team picked an item from the pile of items. Students then met in one of the 6 classrooms on Learning Lane to construct their boats. Teachers in the room did not help the students, they were just there to ask questions and monitor the work being done. Teams were to work collaboratively, including everyone on the team, to create a boat that not only would float, but that would hold some weight. Once the team thought their boat was ready to float the tried the boat on a practice round in a tub of water. If their boat had any issues they had time to fix it to make it work better.
The next week we did a huge Learning Lane experience. We had all the teams bring their boats out to try in big tubs of water and add pennies for weight. Lots of teams had great success with their boats, and a number of them were able to hold approximately 240 pennies.
The next week we were privileged to have a parent of a student from Learning Lane come in to talk to us about how boats work and the history of boats.
At the end of the presentation we let the students know that we were going to go see an actual boat making company. Another one of our student's parents works at Sabre Yachts, and we are very excited to be able to go and take a tour of how a boat is made. We will be going on this field trip Friday, May 29th. Please make sure to return you permission slips before that day.
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| Listening intently to the special guest speaker |
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| Our guest sharing about boats |
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| Working together to create |
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| Lots of creativity |
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| Our Learning Lane meeting, Ms. Johnson sharing some of the building items |
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| Items to pick from |
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| What to pick? |
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| Discussing how to start |
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| Trying to figure out the best plan |
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| Just the beginning stages |
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