April has been a busy month for all of us here at St. Mary! April brought 4th quarter, Easter, the annual Lamb Dinner with Father, and a lot of new concepts to learn! It's hard to believe that the end of the 2016-2017 school year is right around the corner!
The 6th graders have been busy studying "Planetary Systems" in Science. Our Einstein Kit allows students to get an in depth understanding of planetary systems by doing hands on experiments so they are better able to understand how our solar system works. We have explored scaling the size of the planets in our solar system, as well as scaling weight, as well as investigating how craters are formed. The students are really enjoying this unit, especially the lesson that had them design an experiment where they needed to test how different features of craters are formed.
The 6th graders have been busy studying "Planetary Systems" in Science. Our Einstein Kit allows students to get an in depth understanding of planetary systems by doing hands on experiments so they are better able to understand how our solar system works. We have explored scaling the size of the planets in our solar system, as well as scaling weight, as well as investigating how craters are formed. The students are really enjoying this unit, especially the lesson that had them design an experiment where they needed to test how different features of craters are formed.
When learning how to scale weight students were asked to imaging that they took a can of soda from Earth, and traveled to all of the planets in our solar system with the can of soda. There was 8 cans of soda labeled A-G, all of them representing the weight of a can of soda on a specific planet, and they had to identify which can belonged with planet in the solar system based on what they know about the size of each planet and thus the gravitational pull it has. This then gave the students an opportunity to learn the difference between weight and mass. The students did a great job applying what they know about weight, size, and gravitational pull to make educated guesses for each can of soda.