STEM DAY Ten out of Ten!

Mr Rankin promised we would be learning about bridges today and we most certainly did! What a wonderful hands on experience it was - we were introduced to the vocabulary of bridges by viewing appropriate video material and then it was our turn to experiment and discover for ourselves. 

All of these learning activities were supervised by volunteer helpers and Teacher Aides and the children worked together exceptionally well, either in pairs or in teams. 

There were four learning areas - the one outdoors saw a group of children solve how to build an arch out of carefully machined wooden blocks. Then they used wooden arches carefully balanced to resemble the ancient Pont Tu Gard bridge.

The next challenge was to build a lever style bridge out of Lego, like the one at the America's Cup Village.

Using K'Nex, the children had the opportunity to build a range of bridge structures which they mastered very well.

There were some interactive bridge building games to complete on laptops and some interesting facts to learn about bridges.

Two fascinating train tracks (one wooden one and a Lego one) needed to be erected with their special bridges and these taught the children about points and boom gates and how to code trains to make them various actions.

Our sincere thanks to our wonderful helpers - parents, grandparent and sister. We are very grateful to you for all your support! Most of all, a big Kia Ora to Mr Rankin for providing such a wonderful opportunity to develop our Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths skills!