Week 10 23-24

 Fantastic work by another set of Piney Point Panthers in the STEAM Lab this week! Students from Ms. Keahey's kindergarten, Ms. Ppineda's 1st grade, Mr. Arzola's 2nd grade, Ms. Martin's 3rd grade, Mr, Torres' 4th grade, and Mr. Fakhreddine's 5th grade did a great job programming the robots as you can see below:

Week 9 23-24

 A fantastic week in the STEAM Lab! Ms. Tran's K and Ms. Thormodsgaard's 1st did a great job with a clean-up day in the gardens and 4th graders from Ms. Mallona's class and Ms. Barnes' 5th grade home room put together a great garden slideshow this week. In the lab it was robot reenactments and Monarch art projects. Have a look at this week's learning adventures below:

Week 8 23-24

 This week saw the start of our second STEAM Lab Unit - Robotics!

Ms. Hernandez & Ms. Nicholson's classes learned about the Monarch migration and created maps to reenact it with the BeeBots.

Ms. Amos and Mr. Garza's classes explored various Earth/Space natural cycles such as night and day, planetary orbits, and moon phases to recreate with the ozobots.

4th and 5th grade programmed the mBots to perform tasks from historical space missions they researched such as Mercury-Atlas 6, Apollo 11, and Sojourner.

We continued to make time for our repurposed art projects and building challenges as well!

Week 7 23-24

 So much great work happened in just 4 days! Ms. Fuller's 5th grade, Ms. Lee's 4th grade, Ms. Mccord's 3rd grade, Ms. Judha's 2nd grade, Ms. Montoya's 1st grade, and Ms. Nesmith's kinder class were in the lab this week. Check out a few highlights below:

Week 6 23-24

 Another great week in the lab with Ms. Colmenero, Ms. Brown, Ms. Woodard, Mr. Garza, Ms. Guzman, and Ms. Ketsa's classes. Please enjoy a few highlights from our activities:

Week 5 23-24

 A fantastic 5th week with students from Ms. Keahey, Ms. Pineda. Mr. Arzola, Ms. Martin, Mr. Torres, and Ms. Limon's homeroom classes!

Week 4 23-24

 A wonderful week 4 in the STEAM Lab with Ms. Hernandez, Ms. Nicholson, Ms. Amos, Mr. Garza, Ms. P. Guzman, and Mr. Cruz's classes! See highlights - including our 1st monarch sighting of the season - below:

Week 3

 The STEAM Lab hosted Ms. Allende, Ms. Abboud, Ms. Keahey, Ms. Jones, Ms. Cortes, & Mr, Fakhreddine's classes this week! Have a look below for some of our learning highlights:

Week 2

 This week Ms. Almanza, Ms. Whyte, Mr. Dulche. Ms. Pena, Ms. Reilly, and Ms. Barnes' classes visited the STEAM Lab to have their introduction to their new code.org courses, new Eco-Schools responsibilities, and get started with this year's art projects!

Week 1

 Thanks to Ms. Tran, Ms. Thormodsgaard, Ms. Basralian, Ms. Doering, Ms. Mallona, and Ms. Mulry's classes for a FANTASTIC  first week!

Check out a few highlights here:

Welcome to 23-24 STEAM Lab

 I am so happy to welcome you back to another year of STEAM Lab! We have a lot of digital and physical making to do as well as many activities with our Arts Partners and improvements to make in our habitats.

Watch this page for weekly updates featuring photography by our 5th graders!

Welcome to 22-23 STEAM Lab

 Welcome Back, Panthers!

We will be starting the year off with code.org, a math/ art challenge based on A Perfect Square, lots of garden art and garden maintenance to support our Green Hero mission, and a special semester long exploration of Antarctica to help me prepare for my Nat Geo Grosvenor Teacher expedition to the white continent this winter!

 

21-22 STEAM Lab week 18

 Another fantastic week - the new year is off to a great start in STEAM Lab!

Ms. Hernandez, Ms. Brown, and Ms. Giron's did a wonderful job learning about the Galapagos penguin, making a their cardboard models, and learning to use Scratch Jr to create a project sharing what they learned.

K & 1st went out for the year's first campus clean-ups and made some excellent observations outside - Ms. Brown's Monarch Heroes spotted 7 chrysalides and more than 20 larvae.

3rd grade's second week of X3 with Houston Ballet was even better than the first as they named their teams, learned their first segment of choreography, and played an awesome game called Fruit Salad.

The maze projects by Ms. Mallona's class were really fantastic!

Ms. Hernandez & Ms. Brown's students came back to play Ms. Reilly's 4th and Ms. Limon's 5th grades' Cardboard Arcade and agreed they really knocked it out of the park!

@PineyElem in #STEAM Lab Ms Limon's 5th & Ms. Reilly's 4th hosted @jackiebrown01 & @Lid__Hernandez 1st & K classes to their #CardboardArcade. They did a great job working through the steps of the design process to construct fun/ functional/sturdy games. pic.twitter.com/mhQawG0kiv

— kimberly boyce (@kboyceq) January 14, 2022

4th grade started their Create an Opera residency with Houston Grand Opera this week and it is clearly going to be an amazing project!

The classes designed and executed some really gorgeous banners this week as well! 

21-22 STEAM Lab week17

 Welcome back to STEAM Lab! I am really excited about our Cardboard Constructions units. 

K-2 will researching animals of the Galapagos using resources created as part of a Fund For Teachers fellowship last summer to create cardboard slotted animals that they will then incorporate into a Scratch Jr. project sharing facts they learned. See the amazing work done by Ms. Colmenero, Ms. Maldonado, and Ms. James' classes here:

3rd grade is beginning their X3 residency with Houston Ballet - this is an extraordinary opportunity for all 200 students to work with dancers and a musician to Explore, Extend, and Excel through movement. It is a huge hit with students already and they have only learned the warm-up routine!

In STEAM Lab this group is practicing the design process by creating recycled material marble mazes. They draft a design, create a model in LEGO to test it, revise and refine their plan and then construct it using techniques from the Exploratorium's Tinkering Studio. Here is a look at how Ms. Martin's class did:

4th and 5th grade made a spectacular start to this unit's Cardboard Arcade project. They also started by practicing with the Cardboard Connectors from the Tinkering Studio, then drafted a design for their game, produced a materials list, and  started building. Ms. Lee's class hosted Ms. Maldonado's 1st grade and Ms. Mulry's 5th grade invited Ms. Colmenero's kindergarten. Everyone had a fantastic time!

All classes (except Ms. Maldonado and Ms. Mulry - her banner was done previously) designed and created a special banner for their rooms as well. 

Lab Closed for Testing

 I will be engaged in HISD;'s annual Universal G/T screening for Kindergarten and 5th grade students and the neighborhood testing for 1st-5th grade students for the next few week, I look forward to welcoming classed back to the STEAM Lab soon!

21-22 STEAM Lab week 13

 This week was cut sort by some testing, but some fantastic work on the habitat expansion was completed by our Monarch Heroes, and some creative building, and wonderful designs for the class banner projects by the STEAM Lab classes as well.

21-22 STEAM Lab week 12

This week the lab hosted Ms. Almanza, Ms. Montoya, Ms. Arriola, Mr. Willman, Mr. Torres, and Ms. Limon's classes.

They did a fantastic job with the Math Stories and all the associated art and robotics activities! 

Students also made a lot of progress in their code.org courses and third through fifth grade completed the AI and Dance Party Hour of Code activities.

3-5 students continued working on the designing and painting their classroom banners. Everyone put in some work on the habitats to get things ready for the expansion project. The 1st grade painted their new beds (thanks to Mr. Keahey and Mr. Bustos for construction help!)

21-22 STEAM Lab week 11

 This week the lab hosted Ms. Allende, Ms. Nicholson, Ms. Mosquera, Ms. Pena, Ms. White and Ms. Mulry's classes.

Another great showing on the Math Stories activities and Robo-Retells! 

K-2 continue to progress in their coding courses and 3-5 complemented their robotic unit with the Code.org Dance Party & AI Hour of Code.

G/T started work on their November Journals and 4th & 5th grade completed the research for their Galapagos Mini Museum projects.

5th grade put in a habitat work day in their roles as Hero Helpers, cleaning up and putting our cardboard and pallets to help condition the ground for the new beds.

After school enrichment completed their Recycled Orchestra project and it was a phenomenal success!

We were thrilled to have entomologist Ms. Nicole Martinez join us for our Guest Speaker series! We all learned a great deal about insects in general, but also some really useful specifics about pollinators that our Monarch Heroes will be putting to use for this year's habitat plans!

And, as always, a very enthusiastic celebration of creativity and collaboration was on display for Free Build Friday as Keva, LEGO, and Chain Reaction kits took over the lab!

21-22 STEAM Lab week 10

 A great week with some very creative work done by Ms. Hernandez, Ms. Maldonado, Ms. James, Ms. Martin, Ms. Lee, and Mr. Fakhreddine's classes!

We started off strong with our Math Stories: Eric Carle's Rooster's Off to See the World, Marilyn Burns' The Greedy Triangle, and Ann Tompert's Grandfather Tang's Story. Students did a great job on the art activities and interactives, and, after an exploratory play day with the Bee Bots & Ozobots, the Robo-Retells we're a smashing success!

K-2 continued work on their coding courses and 3rd-5th got reacquainted with Code.org through the Dance Party & AI Hour of Code. 

Ms. Hernandez's Green Heroes did a fantastic job with their campus clean-up!

G/T spent some time learning games promoting spatial reasoning, pattern recognition, and visual problem solving: Rush Hour, Quirkle, and Q-Bitz.

In their after school enrichment they make a spectacular start to their Recycled Orchestra with excellent designs and construction of their instruments. 

We lost power Thursday afternoon, so creating their Scratch programs & connecting the Makey Makeys had to be postponed, but no one seemed too upset about a bonus Free Build with LEGO, Snap Circuits, and Meccano!

21-22 STEAM Lab week 9

 This week saw the start of a new rotation! The second cycle will feature a Math Story/ Robo-Retell mash-up where we explore math concepts through art, literature, and robotics. Ms. Colmenero, Ms. Maldonado, Ms. James, Ms. Martin, Ms. Lee, and Mr. Torres' classes absolutely hit it out of the park with these projects this week!

In addition to the math story robo retells we had: code.org, Bee Bot and OZOBOT exploration days, & Free Build Friday, a Green Hero Clean-up, and Monarch Hero Migration Exploration

First grade GT students from Ms. Montoya and Ms. Thormodsgaard's classes staged their adaptation of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar

Live Arts Experiences returned to the building with our beloved Arts Partner DACAMERA! 5th grade loved their "Friendly Debate" Music Encounter

@PineyElem we were thrilled to welcome back beloved Arts Partner @DaCameraHouston! 3 of our 5th grades enjoyed a Friendly Debate Music Encounter as they worked on facts vs opinions@artsconnecthtx @HISDFineArt #ArtsIntegration pic.twitter.com/xwXea1PxaG

— kimberly boyce (@kboyceq) October 20, 2021

We held our very first Student Decathlon!

@PineyElem it's our 1st Student Decathlon! 1st-5th grade students are testing their skills in a range of events from spelling, to dramatic reading, to map interpretation, to listening!
Thanks to proctors @ms_bridgewater @csalas2912 @thompsonmonical & Ms. Accavallo!@HoustonISD_GT pic.twitter.com/nvpi8NDDMV

— kimberly boyce (@kboyceq) October 20, 2021

And last, but not least, we started after school enrichment for 4th & 5th grade students!

 

@PineyElem after school Special Projects class was really productive! They painted 24 recused aluminum can butterflies for a new garden art piece & blended polymer clay to make new butterflies for the library mural!
A little wiring & baking and these will be ready to install! pic.twitter.com/QACXriuL9U

— kimberly boyce (@kboyceq) October 20, 2021