Wow what a wonderful holiday party.  The kids had a great time and so did I.  I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday.

Today in science we looked at some objects that re magnetic.  We played a game that practiced money and knowing if objects are magnetic or not.  Then I gave them a building challenge to demonstrate and test their new knowledge of magnetism.  They were given two sticky notes, a paper clip, tape, string, and a magnet.  They had to design a kite that could fly without being touched.  Check out these amazing kites. 

Today was our field trip to Historic Grapevine.  We are finishing our interactive maps projects.  Check out the project and the scholars final maps.  They are on the bottom of the project.  They did a great job and we had a lot of fun experiencing the Christmas Capital of Texas for ourselves. 
Grapevine Project

Today was the 2nd build day for our package engineering project. We analyzed our plant health from the first build using the rubrics we created last week. Then we decided on the final score for build 1 using the package rubric. After that we walked around and looked at other groups ideas. Then they redesigned their package. Now we will wait and see if their redesign helped improve the score of the package.

Today Mr. Lowe came to share his family's gingerbread house with us.  This years house was a recreation of the Up house from the movie UP.  He discussed how they designed the house, how they built the structure, and then how they decorated it.  He spent a lot of time discussing the base/foundation of the house and how important a strong base is when building structures. 

For engineering today we started the day reviewing everything we worked on yesterday in the imagine stage of the engineering design process.

Then we discussed what was source reduction and why it is an important part of the job for a package engineer. 

Then we looked at the rubric we would use to evaluate their package they are making for the plant. 

We talked about how the plan stage is an important part of the engineering design process.  We talked about how we would all make a plan.  Then they would work with their groups integrating the best ideas from the individual plans to make a group plan for their first build.   They were also given a materials cost form.  We talked about how package engineers have to keep the cost in mind when they are designing.  A package that costs a lot of money will drive up the cost of the product.  They had all the materials they could use on their tables for observations during the plan stage.  They also had the functions of a package chart and the plant health rubric at their disposal during this stage. 

Here are some of the individual plans.

Here are the group plans for build one and the materials cost page.

Then they got to purchase their supplies and build their first package for the plant.  After they were done we will wait 3 days to test them using the plant health rubric. 

Wow we did some amazing work on our package engineering project today. 
We started today working on the Imagine stage of the engineering design process.  Our guiding question:

We talked about how the plant in the story became shriveled and the characters in the story had to improve to make the package successful.  Their first package did not account for the needs of the plant that must be met.    So we watched a short movie about the needs of a plant and made a chart.

Then we watched a movie to review the parts of a plant and created a chart that labeled the parts and discussed the functions of the parts of the plant in keeping the plant healthy.

Then as a class we looked at some plants and created a rubric on what a healthy, somewhat healthy, and not healthy plants properties.  We will use this rubric to determine if the plant package we create is meeting the needs of the plant. 

Then we switched gears and thought about our package from the perspective of the consumer.  We talked about what information the consumer might need from the package. 

Then we reviewed the Functions of Packages and had them think about what their package design might need to include.  They completed a Functions of our Plant Page page to help them with this process.  Then make a class chart with their group findings.  We then analyzed their thinking and determined which items were on the chart for the needs of the plant and which items were on their for the consumer. 

This chart and their plant health rubric will be the criteria by which they will judge their plant package designs. 
Then we started to explore our supplies for the project.  We started with the base package that will be used.  Their two choices are a 1/2 gallon cardboard container or a 2 litter  bottle.  They had to investigate the properties of the material that might be important to look for given this specific design challenge.  They evaluated each of the base packages using Base Packages page.

Then they were given all of the other optional materials for their design.  They looked at the properties of the materials and then applied those properties to how it will function in the package design.