Katie & Jasmine bake with Miss Nancy & Miss Tracy

Katie and Jasmine joined Miss Nancy & Miss Tracy on Sunday, June 6, 2010 for a day of baking and lunch. For this auction item the girls each received a cooking basket complete with utensils, recipe cards, hot pads and a cookbook. From the cookbook the girls picked what they wanted to prepare for lunch and 2 different cookie recipes they wanted to make. We had a wonderful morning filled with laughter and yummy food! Hope you enjoy the pictures!

"Spinning and Rolling" along in Science!

These past few weeks the primary children have started to put things to motion, while keeping in mind the lessons learned about balance. They have enjoyed discovering with their "spinners" and "twirlers" that in order for something to spin in a balanced fashion the mass needs to be centered and it has to rotate fast. This past week they have created rolling systems with a straw as the axle and different sized disks as the wheels. The children were challenged to find a design that would create a "wobbly roller" and a design that could "turn a corner". The students had a lot of fun with these challenges and all discovered that the size of the wheels effected the rotational motion more than weight or mass. Hope you enjoy the pictures! Miss Tracy

Seattle Dream Date with Miss Nancy & Miss Tracy

What can you balance?

The Barn has been a buzz these past two weeks since starting our final Physical Science unit of the year, entitled "Balance & Motion". The first module has introduced the term "balance" and has explained that finding a stable position is considered balanced. The kids have also been introduced to the word "counter balance" and how positioning weight or adding weight can help achieve a stable or balanced position. Each day a new balance challenge is posed that they must test at least five times before reporting their findings. The students are encouraged to achieve balance without any weight, then add one clothespin, then two clothespins for counter weights. The challenge experiments so far have been: balancing a cardboard crayfish on it's nose, tail or claws; balancing an arch and a triangle in as many exploratory positions they could find then following a science sheet to test positions the company showed and compare findings; & balance a cardboard pencil and then a real pencil using a wire. By the end of the week the students had come to realize that if they positioned their weights below the point of balance the more stable the shape would become. We will finish out this week with making a mobile, that will become a science work during Integrated Studies. The next few weeks we will begin discussing motion, so be on the look-out for an update! Miss Tracy