Have A Great Vacation!

Our vacation week is also National Engineers Week. What do you think engineers do?

Engineers come up with creative and practical solutions to problems that people encounter everyday.

In the cafeteria, we use sporks to eat lunch. The spork is a hybrid of spoon and fork. It is a cost effective way to insure that you have both a fork and spoon for whatever lunch is served on that day. Our school sporks are made of plastic, but, sporks can be made from lots of other materials.
Can you think of anything that has been re-engineered or changed from its original design?



The PBS show ZOOM has a website with lots of great engineering activities. Check them out :)
http://pbskids.org/zoom/activities/sci/#engineering
Try some at home with your family. Make sure to read all of the directions and list of materials needed. Bring in a picture of the activity you decided to try.

Get Smarter and Help Others

I found a really cool website that helps you to increase your vocabulary and help feed hungry people around the world. It is called FreeRice. I like it because if you get something wrong, it adjusts to a level that helps you to learn.
The other cool thing about this site is that it has other options besides vocabulary. If you click on the tab that says subjects, it has maps, multiplication review and even foriegn languages!

Click on the icon below and start helping today.




Don't forget to use some of your new vocabulary in your conversations and writing!!!

Snowflake Bentley

Have you ever had something that you were really interested in learning more about?

Some people collect rocks, Yu Gi Oh cards or enjoy reading about animals.

Snowflake Bentley was fascinated by the snow and wanted to learn more about it by photographing snowflakes. Here is a link to some of the images he photographed.

http://snowflakebentley.com/snowflakes.htm

Take a look at the variety of designs. Think about the shapes you would use to duplicate the designs.



Speaking of design, here is a link showing how to build an igloo.
http://www.benmeadows.com/refinfo/Tips/Article1.htm



Think about what you might like to learn more about and send your comments or links.