Our class has been exploring 3D shapes (cones, cubes, rectangular prisms, pyramids and cylinders) and we have noticed these shapes everywhere in our classroom and in our homes. This week we had the hands on experience of building these shapes through our first STEM (Science, Technology Engineering and Math) challenge. After reading the familiar book The Three Little Pigs by Paul Galdone, students were challenged to build their own house for a little pig using toothpicks and gummy candies. We had so much fun trying out different designs and using our knowledge of shapes to help us along the way. We are engineers!
Here students go on a gallery walk to view the finished houses. We drew pictures and wrote about our houses. We shared our ideas and compared the houses...What makes a house strong? Do you think the wolf would be able to blow our house down?
In choice time we connected with 3D shapes by exploring "building straws", Students were encouraged to use their imaginations to create something using team work. Here, a student explains how her group made this structure by working together. Then we all looked at it and imagined what it could be. The ideas we came up with were a house, a tall tower, a castle, a train, or a cage for a big animal.
