Materials, Objects and Everyday Structures

  We have been busy lately!
In science we have been exploring structures and how they are made.

 First, we learned how to sort objects by the materials that they were made from:

Then we learned how to describe objects and materials:

Then we learned that structures have a framework and they support, contain and / or or span.

(oops, we didn't get our photos up of things that span. Bridges span two places, and so do smaller structures like curtain rods.)

 We read about some Goats who wanted to get to a meadow on the other side of a river. They had to cross a bridge which SPANNED the river.

 We started making our own bridges out of Lego.

We learned about fasteners. Fasteners join two (or more) materials together to make objects.

We planned and made bridges using different materials and fasteners. Our material choices included styrofoam, cardboard, small boxes, cardboard tubes... We joined them using glue, tape, split pins, wire and string. Then we tested our bridges to see if they would cross the "river" (a bin) and also if they were sturdy (could stand on their own) and if they could hold up a small billy goat (10 pennies) ; a medium billy goat (50 pennies) or a large billy goat (100 pennies). Some bridges held up all of the billy goats at once!

Then we made a different kind of structure. We made a geodesic dome!

First we rolled many tubes of newspaper (it took 65 rolls!)

Then we started building our dome. The dome takes a mix of long and short rods. It's really hard to tell the difference between a short rod and a large rod. We colour coded them with pieces of green masking tape, but some still got mixed up, so I had to unbuild our dome a bit one night.
 

Then we rebuilt it the next day. It took a lot of teamwork to get this dome up! Some people held, while others taped. and then we switched. And then we switched again! I am SO PROUD of how well we all worked together. And of how patient we all are.

 Our dome was VERY sturdy! But it still collapsed over the weekend :( But we built it back again. We will sit in it to read. only 4 people at a time or it gets too crowded. And then people lean on the rods. And, as we learned from some pigs, houses of bricks are meant to last! Not houses of paper!