April was a big month for the 6th grade at St. Mary's! We had the opportunity to go on an overnight camping trip at Camp Tekawitha in Shawano. This was a great experience for the students, and the staff at Camp Tek planned a lot of fun team building exercises to prepare the students for their transition into middle school. The students had a lot of fun at camp, and this will be an experience that they will always remember! They students were able to cook their own dinner over a campfire, play Human Foosball, Capture the Flag, plan and host a prayer service, play an Amazing Race game, and spend a lot of quality time together.
Our Einstein Kit for fourth quarter is Properties of Matter which is giving us the opportunity to look at composition of elements, compounds, and mixtures. One of the lesson in this unit had the class be investigators to solve a crime. We were given a sample of pen in that was used to sign a check, the problem was the signature did not seem to match the writing on the check. We were given three pens to look at: one from the bank teller, one from the owner of the checkbook, and one from a notorious criminal. We tested the properties of the ink using chromatography paper. After completing our experiment we were able to conclude the criminal forged the signature. In the same lesson, we again used chromatography paper to examine the composition on the colors black, red, green, and brown. The students thought the separation of the colors looked very cool, and when we talked about it we noticed that our base colors were separating into the colors they are made of. We also noticed that red was not separating into different colors, just lighter shades of red. We came to the conclusion that red did not separate into different colors because red is a primary color. The students had a lot of fun with this lesson!
Spring has sprung at St. Mary's, and we are loving the sunshine!