Welcome Back, Panthers!

I am excited to make this year the best the ever in STEAM lab. I am looking forward to seeing all of our Piney Point families at Meet the Teacher tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully everyone had a wonderful summer and is ready to create amazing things in the lab this year.

My summer included attending the Kennedy Center’s Southwest Arts Integration conference and working with a great group of middle school girls on projects such as an mBot Olympics and building a functioning robotic hand.

Last year I worked on earning National Geographic Certified Educator status and their Learning Framework, which outlines a set of attitudes, skills, and knowledge that make up the "explorer's mindset", will be the foundation for our STEAM lab Project Based Learning this year. Also, we will be looking to expand and build on our Eco-Schools projects and develop even more effective Arts Integration with our outstanding Arts Partners. Both of these areas, as always, will be incorporated into the physical and digital projects in STEAM lab.

I am getting everything ready for you, Panthers – I cannot wait to see what you will create!

Not 100% ready yet - but I will be soon!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 32

Such a great week! Campus Cleanups, 3 Cardboard Arcades, Da Camera Music Encounters, Free Build days, Scratch projects, and so much Code.org progress.

Kinder Green Heroes gave the outdoor stage area and our rock garden a thorough Spring Cleaning! They collaborated with their partners in the lab to complete multiple levels in Code.org and earned a Free Build Day! 

We had 3 different 1^st grade classes visit the lab this week. Ms. Pineda’s class worked hard on their Code.org course and earned a Free Build Day AND an invitation to Ms. Grimaldo’s 4^th grader’s Cardboard Arcade, while Ms. Brown’s class came to play Ms. Mulry’s 5^th grade arcade and Ms. Montoya came for Ms. Limon’s group.

Ms. Grimaldo’s 4^th grade not only created their Cardboard Arcade, they also were working on a special Scratch music composition program. They also had a special Music Encounter with Da Camera called Decoding Spirituals which they raved about!

Ms. Limon’s group had a shortened week, as Ms. Mulry’s class came Monday to have their arcade play day, but they succeeded admirably in getting their projects made.

All our visiting classes had a fantastic time and it was wonderful to see so much creativity on display!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 31

Happy Earth Day! At Piney Point we try to treat every day as Earth Day, but this day we do host an annual celebration!

On Monday we officially unveiled all the Earth Day art projects. Students from Ms. Massey’s class were our docents and directed everyone to the work videos. Everyone had a wonderful time and was very impressed by our students’ talent and commitment to our home planet! See the videos HERE

As if Earth Day wasn’t enough excitement for one week, we also participated in the District-wide G/T Expo. We are only allowed 3 projects – which was almost impossible to select as we have so many brilliant students creating so much fantastic work! We presented examples of personal, class, and collaborative projects. David from Ms. Leal’s class and Nabaa and Penelope from Ms. Thormodsgaard’s class represented the school splendidly!

In the lab, we visited the building stations, OSMO, Scratch, and Code.org in K-4 and 5^th grade started work on their Cardboard Arcade. Unfortunately, I had another commitment on Friday so their play day with Ms. Brown’s class had to be postponed until Monday, but they have turned in some outstanding games!

STEAM Lab 2018-19 Week 30

Another short week, but it was packed full of STEAM learning!

Kinder had a very busy week with a field trip to the Hobby Center, a Da Camera Music Encounter, and Field Day! Since we only had a couple of days in the lab we split the time between Code.org and the building stations. They love LEGO, Keva Planks, and the fort builders!

 1^st grade recorded voice overs for their Earth Day mural information panel, enjoyed an Earth Day themed Field Day, and worked on their coding and in the building stations. 1^st graders will be representing Piney Point at the District G/T EXPO next week and were putting a few finishing touches on their products and presentation materials.

2^nd grade also had field day, a final painting day for their Earth Day mural, recoding for their information panel, Code.org, and building stations.

3^rd and 4^th grade had free choice stations this week – popular choices were: Code.org (especially Dance Party and Minecraft!), Scratch, micro:bit, painting with Sphero, LEGO Dacta and WeDo, OSMO (especially Masterpiece!), and they REALLY loved the Kinder building stations! I don’t blame them – you should never outgrow fort building and giant blocks!

5^th grade kicked off #CarboardChallenge season with our 1^st Cardboard Arcade of the year! This is our 3^rd year to hold this and it just gets more popular each year. This activity is based on Caine’s Arcade. Please see the wonderful story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faIFNkdq96U