The CLIC Room has been buzzing with activity before and during school with so many engineering projects.  Kids love to build, test, and redesign their projects, and they learn so much from doing.  

5th graders especially loved the egg drop projects this week.  Students were limited to using 25 straws, 25 Popsicle sticks, 3 feet of tape, 4 feet of string, and a sheet of plastic.  They had one hour to build, test, and redesign their projects with a plastic egg.  It was pretty exciting to work under pressure with limited materials.  The next morning we headed outside for the real test with a real egg.  We first dropped the egg projects off the ladder and then the eggs that made it went on to the drop from the second floor window.  It was so much fun!

The Fourth grade Countries Festival was a great success! I love this yearly Countries project because it is a total immersion of social studies, cultural respect, and creativity. This past month was also about about integration of many disciplines and collaboration between educators and students. We all love to learn about different cultures and the teachers and students learned and created together! I enjoy spending the month with the children helping them create as many projects as they could squeeze in.  The kids love learning about new places so this project is a favorite!

4th graders just had their Countries Festival last Friday showing off their knowledge about their countries with rooms packed with cultural artifacts about each classroom's country of focus. Families and the entire school came to each classroom to learn about Mexico, the Caribbean Islands, Central America, and Canada.

The awesome thing about CLIC is classes can come up every day of the week so the large amount of work that we create is a reflection of this time frame.  Classes spent the last month coming to CLIC, and the teachers had so many great ideas and visions.  The children dove in and worked like crazy to accomplish their vision of how the classroom would transform into their country.  I love walking into the classrooms on the final day to see it all come together.  The rooms are buzzing excitement with the children sharing their knowledge with visitors!

In STEAM Club this month, we are engineering vehicles that are being built with the sole intention to keep the passenger safe in a crash.  Students could only use limited materials like wooden sticks, plastic wheels, straws, tape, glue, a plastic cup, wooden cubes, and rubber bands. The passenger in this case is an egg.  First, we do all of the designing and testing with a plastic egg. but this week we will be using a hard boiled egg in the final test.

The children have loved this project because who doesn't love to crash things!  We set up a ramp that was 1 1/2 feet from the wall, and sent our eggs down to CRASH!  Off came tires and some eggs went flying, but what fun is it to have things work on the first try.  The redesign is the most fun tweaking the car so that the next run is a little bit better.  By the end of the session, most members had a really successful design.

This week should be great fun using the real egg since the shell will be much more delicate than the plastic egg.  Who knew how entertaining an exciting car engineering could be! I love how all of the STEAM students embrace each and every challenge with such enthusiasm.

Over the last two weeks, Mrs. Obuchowski's 6th grade social studies classes have been coming to CLIC to do cultural exploration projects on Africa.  I chose these two projects, because they illustrate the power of  symbolism that each pattern and material reflects.  African tribes have their own identity reflected in their masks, clothing, and ceremonial items.  Students learned how each symbol they chose reflected power, status, and cultural meaning within each tribe.  Students had to then create culturally authentic masks and fabrics using authentic techniques and materials.

What a great job all of the 3rd grade performers at Steward School and Ms. Anderson and Ms. Swanson did in the performance of The Calico Tiger.  All costumes were created by CLIC Program/ Jen LaRussa and the props were created by children on the CLIC Stage Crew at Proctor School.

Besides making absolutely stunning projects, art club and STEAM club work in a similar creative process.  Students learn over and over about the Engineering Design Process in science class, but so rarely get to freely and actively work through the process.  This month especially students who are in both STEAM and Art Club are seeing that an idea starts as a prototype which gets redesigned and then leads to the final product.

Everyone always asks me why STEAM and not STEM Club?  I think that art and the creative process is what makes science and engineering so closely related to the creative process that artists undergo. 

For instance, artists and engineers first come with an idea.  That idea then goes to the messy, prototype stage where you just see what works, what doesn't work.  That idea then gets redesigned or you start over to eventually get to something you want to work further on.
One works out the issues of physically building the project and it is a huge time and money saver. 

When the final project is built, the first prototype is incredibly important.  I have seen how the children look at the prototype as they build the final project, and the difference in the quality is night and day compared to if they just built the final skipping the design/redesign process.

Please come check out the STEAM Club 6 pack can holder packaging projects and Art Club's Endangered Animal projects at the Earth Day event at Proctor School on Friday, April 29, 4-6:00 PM.