May's Sharing Project is the Egg Drop. Work with your child to prepare a package that will hold one RAW egg and keep it safe as it's dropped from the top of the playground. A pink notice with the details was sent home at the end of last week. 
We will be doing this activity on Wednesday, May 15. 
Here are the rules:
1. First place one RAW egg in a ziploc bag. 
2. Next "package" your egg in any way that you would like so that the egg will not break when it hits the ground. 
3. Label the container with your child's name. 
4. Decorate it. 
Use your imagination and have fun!!!!

Team Awesome has been learning about measuring and comparing using nonstandard units such as these paper clips. Measuring with non-standard units means measuring things with blocks, pencils, hands, feet, etc. rather than rulers and tape measures. As long as the items used to measure with are all the same size, e.g. identical blocks or brand new pencils, they are suitable. Measurement builds number sense by having students make predictions and then allowing them to use measurement to check their prediction. Team Awesome is being provided lots of opportunities to sort objects by size using everyday activities and experimenting with real objects. ​Words such as measure, taller than, shorter than, wider than, narrower than, length, volume, weight, area, centimeter, meter, heavier and lighter are all vocabulary words that the children are introduced to and use during our various measurement activities. Seriously, have you ever met a kid that wasn’t intrigued with how big or small something is?  Its exploration at it’s best and when we can add in numbers and counting . . . bonus. ​

​When setting out expectations for a project with the children, Mrs. Farber and I seldom show them an example as they all want to make exactly what was shared with them and not create something of their own. With the catapult project we showed them pictures of a simple working catapult as many of them were unfamiliar with the term but did not show them how to make their own. The children had fun and did a great job figuring out how to use the materials given to complete a machine that would launch an object.  We revisited the catapult idea again later but the second time provided a 'how-to' video and an expanded selection of materials to choose from and reminded them to revise their original ideas and improve upon them as needed. As so often happens when shown how to do something, most of them chose to try and make the exact same catapult from the video rather than playing and exploring with the materials and coming up with or building on their own ideas from the first session. Some of them had a difficult time expanding their thinking beyond their first try and others rose to the occasion and eagerly modified their catapults to make them bigger and better. We will continue to work on encouraging the children to change and rethink and tweek their ideas to improve on them as the year goes on.