Idea Lab Update: 2nd & 3rd Grade

Students are reimagining the future of energy.  They are learning about energy sources, storage, and consumption with our First Lego League unit.  They are utilizing divergent thinking by constructing their own energy sources, storage systems, and consumers all with Lego pieces.  
They are also utilizing convergent thinking by using step-by-step model directions and learning to code/program our Legos with special battery-powered motors and sensors.  
The students have created solar panels, wind turbines, hydroelectric dams, biomass energy farms, and much more.  We think you will be impressed with their ingenuity.  

We hope you will save the date so that every student in 2nd and 3rd grade will be able to join us on February 4th.  

Thank you to Mel's mom for talking with 3Ja and 3P about her job relating to the use of energy consumption.  
If you know anyone in the field of energy that would be willing to come and talk to our class, please let me know.  We would love to have them.  More information to come closer to the date...
We are very excited about this opportunity.  

Thank you!

Idea Lab Update: 1st Grade

 This quarter, our Idea Lab 1st graders continued to learn in new and different ways like our friends at Crystal Pond Woods.  We continued to strengthen our visual-spatial intelligence with tangrams and special puzzles. 

We learned to play games like Blokus and Quirkle to become better at visual-spatial thinking and also think strategically.  

We strengthened our divergent (inventive) thinking by playing the Idea Lab's version of Scattegories.

We thought in creative and divergent ways when we read the books, Not a Box and Not a Stick by Antoniette Portis.  We loved creating things out of boxes and sticks.

We continued divergent thinking by creating our own ocean-themed stop-motion videos.  We hoped you liked the videos that we shared with you.

We practiced convergent thinking by learning to solve logic puzzles, playing logic math games, and following step-by-step instructions to build objects.  

Welcome to our new Idea Lab members:  Aiden, Avya, David, and Harrison.  We look forward to getting to know you and hope you really enjoy Idea Lab!  

Have a great winter break 1st Graders!  You have worked hard and deserve a nice, relaxing break with your family!

First Lego League Challenge: 4th Grade

 Our 4th Grade Idea Lab students represented Spoede well this past weekend at Ladue's First Lego League Challenge.  Amongst 10 teams from across the district, Spoede teams won the Innovation Project award and the Teamwork award.  They did amazing.  So proud of these kids!  

This year's theme was SuperPowered.  The students were challenged to reimagine the future of energy-- improve an existing energy source or create a new one.  The theme addresses global challenges related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal #7 -- focused on ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.  It was a super interesting and difficult topic, and we learned greatly.  We have a highlights video link from the season as well as our presentation recordings from the day.  

Click here for: Kinetic Kids Highlights from the Season 
Click here for: Kinetic Kids Innovation Project Presentation

Click here for: Energy Innovators Highlights from the Season 
Click here for: Energy Innovators Innovation Project Presentation

Lisa Schreiner

Idea Lab Teacher

Spoede Elementary School 

Idea Lab Update: 3rd Grade

We welcomed some new members to Idea Lab this year! It was wonderful to meet our new teammates.  In order to get to know each other a little better, we each designed a mini Lego Bot Prototype that is like ourselves and different than ourselves in many ways.  

We introduced ourselves to our new teammates by presenting our Lego Bots. We explained the similarities and differences between our Bots and ourselves.

There has been a change in the order of our units this semester.  We are taking a pause from our LEGOS for a little while to explore the continent of South America.  In our continent study, we will explore these essential questions: 

Why is it important to the global community to protect the rainforests?

How do we balance the use of resources from the rainforest with the importance of maintaining biodiversity and a flourishing rainforest ecosystem?

How can we protect natural habitats?

We learned a little bit about the continent of South America first before exploring these essential questions and focusing on the rainforest ecosystem.  

Each student used their creativity to create a country collage about a country in South America that they there were interested in learning more about.  

Students will also learn about the physical and political features of South America.  

Students learned about the incredibly rich ecosystem: the Amazon Rainforest that stretches across 9 countries in South America.  Students learned about the many plant and animal species in the rainforest, and the important role it plays in limiting climate change.

*We will pick up our FIRST Lego League unit, SUPERPOWERED, in the second quarter of school as our competition has been scheduled for early February and will take place at Reed Elementary.

 

Idea Lab Update: 4th Grade

 We dove right into our LEGOs this school year! 

We received an amazing grant from the Ladue Education Foundation to purchase the latest and greatest First Lego League materials:  Lego Spike Prime!  

The elementary gifted specialists in the district wrote the grant last school year.  The LEF approved the grant and all of our materials  arrived in August!  Thank you to all who donate to the LEF.  We LOVE the new robotics kits!

This year's theme is SUPERPOWERED.  We have a few goals to achieve before our First Lego League competition on
Saturday, December 3rd from 8:30-12:30.  
(Save the date!)  

1. Learn about the new LEGO robotics tools and programming.  
2. Build & complete 3 missions of the Robot Game.
3. Create an Innovation Project that either improves an existing energy source or creates a new energy source that does not exist.
4. Create a display board and develop an oral presentation related to our Innovation Project that involves all members of our team.

Some of the mission builds were very tricky!  We have a Westminster High School student, Mr. Blake, who is planning to be an engineering major in college.  He is receiving senior service hours by volunteering in Idea Lab!  We are so glad to have him.  

We will also be judged on the First Lego League Core Values: 

Click the links below to see LEGO Robotics in action.  We will try to include various video links in each update.  

 Wind Turbine for the Robot Game

Lego Spike Prime Bot Turning & Spinning

 Lego Prime Bot Turning & Avoiding Obstacles

 Lego Prime Bot with attachments Grabbing & Pushing

 

Idea Lab Update: 2nd Grade

 We've had a fun start to Idea Lab in 2nd Grade!  We created a LEGO Maze with legos and a marble for a fellow classmate to solve.  The maze had to have a start/finish, a successful path, and obstacles to maneuver.   See mazes in action below.

We also each designed a mini Lego Bot Prototype that is like ourselves and different than ourselves in many ways.  Students presented their Bots to the class explaining the similarities and differences as well as the strengths and weaknesses of the Bot.

Students have seemed excited and happy to return to Idea Lab this school year.  This is wonderful to see!   We have a change in our unit plans,
and we are going to take a pause from LEGOS for a bit to explore the continent of South America and project-based learning centered around the Amazon Rainforest.  

*We will begin our FIRST Lego League unit, SUPERPOWERED, during the 2nd quarter as our competition will take place in early February at Reed Elementary. 

To see our LEGO mazes in action, click here.  

We will continue to keep you updated on our learning in Idea Lab!  Stay tuned...

Welcome new 1st Graders!

 Welcome new 1st Graders!  So glad you are here!

On our first day, we read a book called:  Rosie Revere Engineer.  This book is about pursuing one's passions and learning that there will be setbacks along the way.  All of those mishaps help us learn and grow.  After reading this story, students were challenged to engineer their own creation of legos that represents who they are.  The lego creations should be symbolic of their own interests, talents, or hobbies.  The students would share their lego creations with the class so that we all could get to know each other better.  



Two of our students found out that they both have a love of gymnastics, so they combined their creations together to create an entire gym of gymnastics equipment.

To learn more about each other in our next session, students took their names and turned the letters into pictures that represented some interests they have.
 
   After getting to know each other, we were introduced to special P.E.T.S. characters from Crystal Pond Woods that will help us learn in new and different ways. P.E.T.S. stands for Primary Education Thinking Skills.  Dudley the Detective, Isabel the Inventor, Sybil the Scientist, Yolanda the Yarnspinner, Max the Magician, and Jordan the Judge will help us understand different kinds of thinking... like convergent analysis, divergent synthesis, visual/spatial, and evaluative thinking. We will continue to ask ourselves: What areas of thinking come easily and naturally for me? What are some areas that I can work on improving?

We began practicing our different types of thinking with the character, Max the Magician, and visual/spatial thinking.  Grandfather Tang's Story introduces a Chinese puzzle, 7 tangram pieces,  to students through a story about a grandfather and his granddaughter who witness a fox change into many different characters represented by tangram pieces.  Students tried making various animals with their tangram pieces.

Then, students tried making other tangram creations-- one being the very challenging tangram square, as well as other tangram puzzles.  


Students created a LEGO Maze for a friend to solve using lego pieces, a base, and a marble.  The LEGO Maze had to have obstacles or challenges for the solver.


   The students also learned how to play two games that also help practice their visual-spatial intelligence: Blink and Set. 

We continued our practice of visual-spatial thinking with some independent activities as well.  The emphasis is on stimulating each child’s spatial intelligence by analyzing spatial relationships and making predictions.  Students are asked to look for patterns and find one solution that works.

Set is a card game, but If you would like to play the game online at home with your child, click on the image below.  

We also focus on social-emotional awareness in Idea Lab.  Recently, we learned about perfectionism.  Perfectionism can hold us back. It can make us afraid to make mistakes. We learned that we can take a mistake and change it into something beautiful. We called it our Beautiful Oops!

 It was also an exercise in imagination and creativity.

We have really enjoyed getting to know each other in Idea Lab.  We look forward to having some fun challenges ahead.  We will keep you updated along the way.