Friday, March 26, 2021

St. Patrick's Day and Offline STEAM fun

 Last week, I saw 4 out of my 5 groups.  Monday March 22nd, I finally saw the 5th group.  We were doing some offline learning fun before going back to Code.org lessons this week.  One group saw me on Monday and Wednesday (March 15 and 17) because of the "Snow Make Up" schedule.  So on Wednesday March 17th, Kindergarten, 1st grade and 2nd grade worked on a St. Patrick's day choice board.  First they created a piece of art then got to explore videos, games, and history.  Here is link to the choice board created by another librarian with permission. St. Patrick's Day Choice Board.  My Kindergarteners all did the same Pot of Gold art video on Wednesday instead of complete free choice.











Here are some of the other offline activities from last week in school:

2nd grade was working on Binary, Bits, and Bytes.  They deciphered a binary or secret message and made a binary bracelet.  This was part of the Code.Org program.  Ms. Ewanick's class will be doing that next week.  I was having a Monday morning and skipped right to this week's lesson in Code.org.  
Here are some of the videos that we watched as part of the lesson:





1st grade and Mrs. Kotlar's Room worked on a robot activity and penny experiment.  The balancing robot was printed on card stock.  Students colored and cut them out before they learned the secret trick!  The trick is weights or coins on the back on the arms.  While they were working, we investigated on how to clean a penny - water vs. ketchup.  They made a hypothesis and watched it under the ELMO document camera.  
Here is a fun science explanation:




Balancing Robot link - Robot printable and explanation

Kindergarten worked on online safety using Common Sense Media curriculum.  We discussed three big rules - 1. Ask permission  2.  Only talk to people you know    3. Go to just right websites

They created a picture to share what they learned.  Overall, the students seemed to understand these concepts.  Planting seeds to watch them grow.  Keeping students safe!  

Then they could explore the San Diego Zoo.  The videos section worked best.  The game is not touch sensitive and the other tabs involved lots of reading.  If you keep scrolling past the animal cams then you get many fun animal based videos.  San Diego Zoo Videos

3rd and 4th grade are working on Power Points and wrapping up the projects.  They were supposed to be done before Easter/spring break for most of the students, but remote learning interrupted us.   Permission slips for submitting to the Invent It challenge are going to start after Spring/Easter break.  This is a totally optional part of the project!  

Sunday, March 21, 2021

House projects

 Over the summer, my mom mentioned that flooring in my kitchen needed updated (she was done bumping her toes as she went from one room to the next).  It was on my "want to do" projects.  When we moved in, we first removed wooden posts, shelves, and other accent wood which made doorways smaller and created a "rustic" look.  Unfortunately, flooring had been added around them.  This created weird missing pieces of flooring and uneven seams between the living room and dining room as well as the living room and hallway.  It was a toe killer for many however I think that I only made this mistake once ;)

We removed these wood accents.  





Here is what is looked like before from the other side.




So Tim and I decided in August to rip up part of the hallway flooring to see what was really under there and in hopes of finding more original hardwood.  Neither of us are carpenters, but we found scrapers and crowbars and hammers and started on this adventure.   First was a layer of gray "sticky" square tile.  This revealed wooden under flooring.  However, I felt that there was more!  So we pulled that up and found crazy 80's brown laminate.  This was over another layer of much older laminate.   There is a wood layer or two under this original laminate, but it was not accessible.  When we pulled up the layers, we were left with a greenish felt like product.  Well the hallway stayed in this state of ripped up yuck for way to many months.  

Here are most of the floors - the dots are original then the 80s then the wood then the grey floor




Hallway before with the honey doors and grey floors.


We looked for tile, hardwood, etc... not sure what we were looking for.  Quickly, we decided "wood like" products were out as we had beautiful original hardwood in the living room, dark kitchen cabinets, and honey wood colored doors in the hallway.  The new floor had to match all three since we planned to do the hallway/kitchen/dining room in a matching floor like it was already.  I am not much of an interior decorate or a color matching expert.  However, we looked and researched.  Our first contact was a hard wood expert who stated that the hallway was just plywood and not hard wood.  BUMMER!
Next was flooring places and AR websites.  I found one that I loved.  It was one of the more expensive ones that looked like stone with a variable array of browns and oranges and the grout was extra and I like the look with grout too!



Fast forward, school started and remote learning bouts and life and Covid restrictions.  Tim even priced out another floor at another location, but my favorite was the cheapest in the end.  As soon as we knew the date of install, then we had to the demo of the kitchen and dining room.  I wanted to wait as long as possible since I knew that exposed plywood and felt stuff were NOT sanitary.  YUCK really. 

So fast forward to Saturday afternoon.  I start chipping away at the last few feet of hallway which have had been rocking the 80's tile and was right next to the kitchen.  The children helped and Tim pulled up the wood and sticky tile layer with the help of our 13 year old.  Our five and eight year olds loved pulling up nails.  I kept chipping away at the 80's and original tile inch by inch.  It was a SLOW process.  We worked for about 8 hours minus a quick pause for church.  At midnight, I admitted defeat and went to bed.  The next morning following time change, we started again. Based on the rate of work, I knew that I had 9 hours of tearing up left as well as a COVID vaccine and a promise to stop at the maple tour in the area.  So we all headed out to keep my appointment and our promise.  

Progress


The slow messy process


In the meantime, my dad got word of this slow process and found a possible solution online - a bigger long handled scraper usually used for ice.  He loves a good project and helping us out...so he joined the fun.  Well that tool was so much faster than my little scraper, hammer, and crowbar system.  It was all out in about 2 hours.   This meant we had extra time to try to remove the yucky gray felt stuff with the door wide open for ventilation.    Water initially didn't penetrate the felt...we tried goo gone and baking soda.  Tim re-tried the watered area after 30+ minutes and it came up!  It left a yucky slimy residue behind.  We figured out to squeegee the goop up then wipe it with a rag to clean up the remaining goopy gluey stuff.  YUCK...smell was terrible as the old glue finally broke down.  Fast forward, we ate a picnic in 40 degree weather with grilled hamburgers and waffle fries and FROZE.  

The slime stage 

Almost ready for new floors


Ready to go


By bed time, the kitchen was done, clean up was done, and bed was calling.  Monday was a normal day minus vaccine side effects for me (Headache and tired).  Tuesday was the new floor.  We learned that the felt didn't actually have to come up.  New underlayment and the beautiful new tile give the room new life.  Now we hope to add some new storage type pieces to finish off the room and newer matching curtains and curtain rods.    




Before shot



After shot from the same angle (sort of)


New and improved hallway

Another angle of the new floor


Labor of love...but a 25 year guarantee and a beautiful product means that we should not have to repeat this process.  This was a bigger project than I expected.  However, the pay out is awesome!  Transition strips are added...not more stubbed toes...not more missing flooring....it matches (previous gray floor didn't really match the rooms)...a big project done together as a family...creating memories...both the kids saved chunks of the 80's laminate as a memory of the old floor.  



Saturday, March 13, 2021

One year

 March 13, 2020 was 2 weeks to flatten the curve.  I knew that it was a historical moment.  I still could not predicted many of the events of the past 365 days.  

Personally, I NEEDED a break.  My 11 and 13 year olds had just participated in our high school musical, the art teacher and I teamed up for an EPIC OUT OF THIS WORLD art show, and more.  Tired approached a new level.  

I had decided that I could make it Easter, but decided to use a few personal days to give myself a bit of a break after Easter break (I rarely use personal days). So this two week shut down came at the right time in my life.  I did not need to use those days in the long run.  

It has been a year.  I can list positives and negatives... I could discuss many other activities going on in the world, but I want to keep this about moving forward, learning, and growing.  I wish that I had some magical post or meme or idea, but this is all I have got in my head this morning.  I also want to stay NEUTRAL!  No controversary in my blog ;)

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My STEAM room has been busy.  3rd and 4th graders are wrapping up their INVENT IT projects.  Many of the students are working well on this project.  The freedom is a bit of a challenge for some students. They get off task, play around, distract others.  Many are moving full steam ahead to create some awesome projects.  Many are held together by Dollar Tree masking tape (it works well for the price!) and hot glue...lots and lots.  We have used cereal boxes, cardboard tubes, egg cartons, string, and even OLD messed up lamination film (someone forgot to turn off the laminator years ago and ran the WHOLE roll through blank and it had to be thrown out or hoarded in the STEAM room!).  









2nd grade is working on art and technology together.  We learned about pixels first.  Then we did some offline and online pixel art.  The website that we used was ABCYA PIXEL ART.  I found many but knew that was a safe website.  The next week we made hats for Read Across America week.  We did follow Seuss before we knew that the controversary was so rampant.  Students created a pirate hat from upcycled newspaper.  Our inspiration video was -



Here are a few of those creations:



Then this week we started Code.org lesson on Art drawing.  It uses the terms like pixels.  Plus most classes tried the Stick Together Mosaic as well.  Here is a link - please add 20 stickers to our online mosaic!  I started this with 3rd and 4th grade while remote, but did not get much buy in or assistance.  Hope to see what it is soon!  Here is that link - Stick Together Mosaic


Kindgarten and First grade worked on ROBOTS.  They did similar but different activities.  For example - Kindergarten got a robot head and finished the drawing as a warm up.  While first grade got three sets of legs and had to decide how to finish the creations.  Then we read Boy + Bot. 


Finally, we built some online robots.  First grade could choose from ABCYA Build a Robot OR PBS Kids Curious George Robot activity.  Kindergarten just did PBS KIDS option.  Then we did some Dr. Seuss/Read Across America inspired activities.  First grade made crowns/hats for hat day.  Kindergarten listened to "What Pet Should I get" from online then built a pet out of LEGOS then took a picture/video on Seesaw.  If they had time, the students could explore PBS CAT in THE HAT WEBSITE.  
Here are our recent websites:
ABCYA Build A Robot

Curious George Build A Bot

What Pet Should I Get Read Aloud







First grade and Kindergarten are continuing with computer coding on Code.Org.  First grade is working on repeats and loops which can be a CHALLENGE.  K loved the BB8 Robot level this week and cleaning up metal.  Most of them just work through the challenging puzzles step by step.  First grade are trying their best, but the touch pad computers are a hinderance to efficiency and mouse control.

Personally, I am still listening to my blogs, back to in person meetings, and trying to keep up with everything.  March is here and it is MAPLE syrup season.  So that is always fun and interesting too.  Maybe I should share some of this with the students this week!  

I hope you enjoy hearing about what is going on in schools.  Pandemic or not...learning and fun must go on :)