Today we explored Tangrams to practise and gain confidence navigating our keyboard and keyboard shortcuts.
A tangram includes 7 shapes or polygons that can be moved, rotated and flipped to create objects, animals and people.
First we practised the keyboard shortcuts to move, rotate and flip. Then we tried some of the Tangram challenges.
Visit our learning site to see more about the Tangram Challenge.
This week was Marble Week in Room 6. We didn’t know what to expect but we had fun and learned a lot about speed. We all had our own marble bags and a few marbles to play with. The big ones were heavy. We watched a few videos about marble games people have played a long time ago. Did you know that the first marbles were made from stone and clay and have been found in the tombs of the Pharaohs? We were amazed at all the games we could make up under the canopy:
Then we worked with a partner and we had to design a marble run. We each drew a design on a piece of paper and then we had to discuss which parts we liked. Then we collected materials to use from around the classroom and started building.
The best part was when we had stuck up a few runs with tape and we experimented with the marbles to see how fast or slowly they rolled. The hardest part was getting them to stay on the run if we had made a very steep one. We had to do heaps of adjustments all the time but we got there in the end.
We learned that the gentler the slope, the slower the marble rolled and we had more control over the direction it could go next. We learned about potential and kinetic energy – by picking up the marble it has potential energy and it has kinetic energy when it is rolling down the runs.