17-18 week 7

A sensational 7^th week in the Piney Point STEM lab featuring:

Ms. Ballentine’s Pre-K

Ms. Caro’s Kindergarten

Ms. Thomas’ 2^nd grade

Mr. Briceno’s 3rgd grade

Ms. Martinez’s 4^th grade

And Ms. Mulry’s 5^th grade

PPES Stem lab wk7 from Kimberly Boyce-Quentin on Vimeo.
Pre-K went out to check on their sunflowers and were very impressed with how much they have grown. They worked on letters, numbers, and shapes in clay this week.

Kinder made their Litter Less Green Hero capes this week! We reused grocery sacks and talked about reducing consumption and reusing help the earth. We also went out to check on the pumpkin patch – the vines are growing everywhere, and flowers are blooming! Pumpkins can’t be far behind. They also had their computer parts petting zoo and got started in their code.org coding course.

2^nd grade started the week with a special performance of their peers’ Mini Drama Fair performances! Back in the lab we discussed the difference between drawing and designing and then set to work to design a robot assistant! They also learned how to access their code.org class and made a lot of progress on the programming challenges!

3^rd and 4^th grade started with Kobi Yamada’s What Do You Do With an Idea? And created wonderful Idea Portraits. They started work on their grade level code.org courses also.

5^th grade started a new unit – mini milk carton automata. They also made some excellent progress in their code.org course!

We wrapped up the week with a Free Build Friday!

17-18 Week 6

Where is this year going? This 6^th week was another fantastic fiesta of creative & collaborative problem solving!

STEM lab hosted:

Ms. Sato’s Pre-K

Ms. Almanza’s Kinder

Ms. Lugo’s 2^nd grade

Ms. Roesch’s 3^rd grade

Ms. Nelson’s 4^th grade

Mr. Torres’ 5^th grade

PPES STEM lab wk6 from Kimberly Boyce-Quentin on Vimeo.

The week started off with a special presentation for PK-2^nd! A dairy cow came for a presentation about nutrition and some basic facts about where our food comes from! Sonny was a big hit with all the children!

Classes all went out for progress checks on our various Eco-School projects – the habitats, Pumpkin Patches, and Sunflower Street are all doing well! We continue to see lots of pollinators in all the gardens. Our Monarch Heroes launched our annual Monarch Money drive – they have a goal of $800.00 this year!

Pre-K spent the week exploring the possibilities of play dough! They made letters, numbers, and lots of shapes. Kindergarten had their computer petting zoo to get to know all the parts of the computer and their jobs. Next they learned about how code tells the computer what to do. They started working in their Code.org class and were doing a great job creating simple algorithms!

2^nd-5^th had their first activity of identifying the difference between drawing and designing! Next they jumped into the grade-level coding courses. They accomplished a lot for just a few days, so we celebrated with Free Build Friday!

17-18 week 5

Another whirlwind week here in the Panther STEM / STEAM lab!

This week’s STEM stars:

Ms. Guerrero’s Pre-K

Ms. Bell’s Kindergarten

Ms. Keahey’s 2^nd grade

Ms. Accavallo’s 3^rd grade

Ms. Alanis’ 4^th grade

Ms. Moreno’s 5^th grade

Piney Point STEM lab 1718 week 5 from Kimberly Boyce-Quentin on Vimeo.

Our 1^st grade Monarch Heroes bid buen viaje to our ambassador butterflies! They are participating in the Annenberg Foundation’s Journey North symbolic migration. Each student created a paper butterfly that will spend the winter with a school child from Angangueo, Mexico, near the monarch over-wintering sanctuaries. Click HERE for a slideshow.

K and 1^st were treated to an amazing puppet show, “Favorite Stories” by Jean Kucher via our Arts Access Initiative. It was a huge hit! Scenes from this performance are  HERE.

The George Playhouse from New Jersey thanks to funding from Novo Nordisk created a remarkable musical called Austin the Unstoppable that they are taking to schools around the country. We were thrilled to have this performance promoting healthy living choices! See scenes HERE

Pre-K started a unit about clay, using dough to form letters, numbers, animals, and basic shapes. Their sunflowers continue to make progress outside in the beds as well!

Kinder was introduced to code.org and their beginning computer and programming vocabulary. Ms. Bell’s class also had their first campus clean-up day! Go Green Heroes!

2^nd grade created designs for a robot assistant and 3^rd – 5^th followed up Kobi Yamada’s What Do You Do With an Idea by creating Idea Portraits. Next they all got started on their code.org classes. Students are really enjoying the new courses! They like the range of activities – puzzle solving, drawing challenges, game programming – and the characters too! Star Wars, MineCraft, Ice Age, Angry Birds are all very popular!

So much outstanding perseverance and respectful collaboration needed to be acknowledged, so everyone had a Free Build Friday! All building stations were open (unfortunately the robots are not all unpacked yet – next time!), except for the MakerSpace. It was doing duty as a scene and costume shop for 1^st and 2^nd grade classes prepping for next week’s Mini Drama Fair. It was almost more a treat for me than for the students! There was 100% engagement, imaginations soared, creative collaboration abounded, and the room almost sparkled with joy! Everyone was brilliant, inspired, inventive, resourceful, and even more beautiful was the way in which they all supported and validated each other’s work.

17-18 week 4

A fantastic, but frenetic 4^th week in the STEM lab! We hosted:

Ms. Ballentine’s Pre-K

Ms.Tran’s Kindergarten

Ms. Thompson’s 2nd grade

Mr. Garza’s 3rd grade

Ms. Grimaldol’s 4th grade

Ms. Limon’s 5th grade

PPES STEM lab wk 4 from Kimberly Boyce-Quentin on Vimeo.

The real story this week was our long-awaited Eco-Schools Green Flag celebration!

Click HERE to read about it on HISD’s News Blog

See event pictures from HISD's Facebook HERE

We started our last crop of Sunflower Stars this week! I was so happy to meet Ms. Ballentine’s class and get started on our project. They learned all about the parts of plants and what they do, what plants need to survive, and how to plant a seed. They also made paper plate sunflowers!

Kindergarten started the week by getting acquainted with various parts of a computer – they examined the monitor, mouse, keyboard, and a micro-computer. They also made a good start on their Level A coding course in Code.org.

2^nd grade designed Robot personal assistants that were specially imagined to perform specific tasks – personal pizza maker and homework doer continue to be popular models! 3^rd-5^th grade worked on their idea portraits, and all 4 grades got started on their level Code.org course. Everyone made amazing progress! In fact, they all sis so well that all 4 grade earned a Free Choice Friday!