Engineering Lab

Subtitle

Kindergarten


In the first quarter, Kindergarten students will observe the weather using their senses. They’ll also make flags and discover how to compare wind speeds on different days. Each Kindergarten class made graphs of featuring the students’ favorite kind of weather—see them posted outside the Engineering Lab, Room 109. Students will also start a unit about fabric. Here’s a description from the FOSS website: Fabric, a material so often taken for granted, makes a fascinating study for early-childhood students. Students are introduced to a wide variety of fabrics in a systematic way, so that they become familiar with fabrics' properties, discover what happens when they are tested, and discover how they interact with other materials, including water. 


First Grade


First Graders will spend the quarter observing and working with solids and liquids, a module unit from FOSS. As stated in the FOSS website: The Solids and Liquids Module provides experiences that heighten students' awareness of the physical world. Matter with which we interact exists in three fundamental states: solid, liquid, and gas. In this module first and second graders have introductory experiences with two of these states of matter, solid and liquid.


Second Grade 


Second graders will be using FOSS Balance and Motion, designing and making things that balance, starting with crayfish and arches! They’ll also design and create mobiles while they learn about counterweights, balance points and how objects rotate on an axis. They’ll create a variety of objects that roll, and design a roller coaster for marbles.

Third Grade


Third graders are studying water in science. In Engineering Lab, they’ll be working on Water, Water Everywhere: Designing Water Filters. They’ll learn about water pollution and design a water filter that cleans particles and color out of a mystery water sample.

Fourth Grade



Using STC's Land and Water Module, 4th grade students explore different interactions between land and water, such as how runoff causes stream formation; how groundwater forms; how soil is eroded, transported, and deposited; and how water shapes land. Students change the number of streams, create hills, and build dams to observe how these things affect land and water interactions. Students come to understand how water shapes the land and how, in turn, the land directs the flow of water.