The Weekly Newsletter
Week 37, July 5-7
Welcome to the newsletter for our shortest week of the year! This week really did fly by. We were only in the studios for two days out of the whole week and spent our last day at the beach! That being said, we still had a lot of fun in the short time we had with our Water Week projects. Here’s a quick look into some of our adventures:
This week was water week which means we focused on all things water and how cool it is. When we came back from our very long weekend, we went right into mini projects.
Bella demonstrated the relationship between water and air pressure by “bending the rules” of gravity. She put a piece of cardboard over a full glass of water and turned it upside down. Amazingly, the cardboard stuck to the full glass without anything spilling out. That’s some strong air pressure!
Vika demonstrated the effects of friction on a fragile object by using a piece of string to “ice skate” over a piece of ice. After 5 minutes of the weighted string putting pressure and friction on the ice, it had significantly cut through the ice cube, showing how friction creates heat!
Leticia created beautiful music by simply filling three glasses with differing levels of water. She proved that the more liquid in a glass, the higher the pitch will be when it’s tapped on. This is because when there is less distance for vibrations to travel, they travel faster and thus create a higher pitch….and vice versa for lower levels of water.
Carly showed us how certain molecules work and how flexible they can be with her leak proof bag demonstration. She filled a plastic bag with water and stuck a sharp pencil all the way through…with no leak! She did some research and found out that most ziplock bags are made from polyethylene. Chemically, this material has very flexible molecules that will form and tighten around anything that tries to puncture it! So cool!
Reese set up a fascinating demonstration showing why it rains. She heated up water in the microwave and filled a glass jar with the hot water. Then she covered the jar with a plate and put some ice cubes on top. Inside the glass, rain began to fall from the plate! She proved how when warm and cool environments meet, condensation and rain began to appear!
Ryan did a cool experiment about water density. He started off by filling three glasses of water. In glass 1, he dissolved salt with the water; in glass 2 he dissolved sugar; in glass 3 he dissolved baking soda; and in the 4th glass he left the water alone to be “fresh” water. Next, he dropped small items into each of the water. To our amazement, the objects floated in the first three glasses but not the fourth, untouched water! He proved how density and water can effect whether or not an object can float in it. Fascinating!
Some other cool things throughout the week:
We celebrated both Bella’s and Sean’s birthdays! Both exceptionally important and special people to all of us, and it was so much fun to celebrate them and all the gifts they bring to the world!
In art this week, the students did an “exquisite corpse” project. This project encourages you to use your imagination and teamwork skills to draw a body. The body ends up being whatever awesome creature all of the artists collectively come up with. Charlie brought in big sheets of paper and folded them into sections. Using whatever medium of their choosing (most used markers and crayons), the Eagles took turns drawing sections of a body without seeing what was previously drawn, and letting their imaginations run wild!
For the water project on Thursday we learned about Hydropower and the incredible technology the world has come up with using water. We did research on waterfalls and where they come from, as well as how much (so much!) water is involved in some of the most incredible waterfalls in the world like Niagara Falls. The students then created their very own Hydropower machines! The thought and creativity, as well as the impressive craftsmanship that they showed in the project was so awesome. Then we ended the day with a water balloon fight. It was epic.
We ended the week with a super fun beach day where we played Bocci Ball, swam in the ocean, and had an interesting Newsela article about whether or not schools should be required to teach cursive.
It was a great week and we can’t wait to see everyone on Monday for our last week of school! We will be learning all about astronomy and astrology and I am very excited for this quest 🙂
Have a good weekend and stay cool!
