STEAM
Foundation
Our Foundation students have been exploring push and pull forces through colourful, hands-on art! We began by talking about how we know something is a push or a pull, then students rotated through two exciting activities.
Blow Painting – Using straws, students pushed the dye across the page with their breath to make swirling patterns.
String Pull Art – Students dipped a string in paint, folded their paper, and pulled the string out to reveal amazing shapes.
Students loved sharing their artwork and explaining which force they used.
Year 1/2
Our Year 1/2s have continued their work as robot engineers using LEGO WeDo! Students followed the digital instructions to build different robots and used coding blocks to make them move, spin, light up, or make sounds.
They’ve been learning to:
- follow build instructions
- test and change their code
explain what each block does
Over the next few weeks, students will be creating their own tutorial in Seesaw to teach others how their robot works.
Year 3/4
Students learned so many things about living things over the past two terms that we thought we should share our knolwedge with others. How are we doing this? Through video games.
Students have been busy creating their very own video games by coding using the Scratch block coding. Here are some examples:
- Aaron and Alex's catch game https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1243549995 This teachers the player learn about how all living things need energy that they get by eating.
- Luis and Owens jump game https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1246881941 teaches players about how all living things respond to stimuli as well food chains. In this game, you must help the zebra jump to avoid getting eaten by the lion.
- Rayaana and Tommy's mouse trail game https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1246883081 that teachers players about food chains and eating.
- Lennox and Billy have created a chase game that is interestingly controlled by moving your head! It explores the dilema of the introduced cane toads and has players avoiding them so their snake does not get poisoned: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1240865017
Year 5/6
Students have been learning about chemistry in the yummiest way possible - through cookie deocrating. Students have been challenged to come up with an artistic design for their cookies as a celebration of the year, or in the grad 6s case, their time here are Newlands Primary School. They each have the choice to use fondant or royal icing for their final deocrations.
Students created fondant stamps on Tinkercad and they are being printed in our 3D printers as we speak. This will imprint awesome patterns into their final designs.
We have examined the structure of atoms in the different states of matter and used this to help us manipulate fondant icing (warming it up to make it more maleable, cool it down to harden it up) and understand that changes in states of matter are reversible. Next week we will be baking cookies to demonstrate irreversible changes that occur during cooking.
