The last week before our Thanksgiving week off was a busy one at Cannon! First on Thursday we had our Family Engineering Night. We had already constructed rafts in class and investigated sails and tested materials. On the big night students brought their plans and their families and constructed the sails they had designed. The materials workstations in the hall were packed with busy builders!
Students eagerly attached their sails to their rafts. Then it was off to the science lab to test their work. We had "rivers" and "wind" ready (rain gutters and fans, actually) and students faced off with another designer to see whose raft sailed all the way to the end fastest. Students were highly motivated to go back and improve their sails for as long as time, materials, and energy held out!
The next morning we held our first Heritage Day at Cannon and invited grandparents to join us in class. First we talked a little about how times have changed since the grandparents were in school. (Remember chalk, filmstrips, film projectors, typewriters, and messages that had to be carried to the office by hand?) Next we spent a little time showing off our increasing reading skills to all our visitors.
And then students and grandparents participated in a design challenge to build the tallest structure out of only toothpicks and cranberries! You can see some serious design faces hard at work here...
Kassidy's group had a skyscraper of a tower!!
After that the grandparents went off with their grandkids to visit the technology display and the book fair while the rest of us cleaned up and got ready for the rest of our day.
It was great to have all of our families at these events - both the engineers building sails and the grandparents spending time with us during the day. I hope you enjoyed your visits as much as we did!
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