Cougar Cub Inventor's Workshop Information

I am so excited to be hosting another inventor's workshop. I love seeing families and students work together to create and build in a FUN learning environment AND I have some new items to try this year! I hope you can make it! Here are the details:

Richmond Elementary School , in conjunction with Vermont State Science Fair and the Society of Women Engineers is proud to present the:

COUGAR CUB INVENTOR’S WORKSHOP

Thursday November 12^th, 2015

5:30 – 7:30pm

RES Gym

Cost: 2$ per Student (to cover cost of disposable resources, scholarships available)

What is an Inventor’s Workshop?

This workshop is a family-friendly event to MAKE, create, learn, invent, craft, recycle, think, play and be inspired by celebrating arts, crafts, engineering, science and technology.  Students will work with their families to create!  Activities will be facilitated by engineers and teachers, but tasks will be open ended and creative.  Families will have an opportunity to learn together as they experience the fun of making / building / constructing / designing and more! A variety of activities will be available to challenge students from Grades K – 8.

A Sampling of Activities Planned for Our Workshop Include:

Cardboard Challenge:  Create with cardboard! The possibilities are endless!

Building a fort with Bloxes!  Bloxes are life-sized cardboard building blocks. They're used as furniture, walls, and forts by Google, Twitter, Mozilla, and many more.  Now you can try building with this elusive construction material.

Making a keyboard with bananas!  MaKey MaKey Boards are electronic devices that convert many regular objects into keys on your computer to control programs like Scratch or videos games.  Objects that are conductive, even slightly, like fruit or people, can be used with the MaKey.  

Creating lighted origami!  LED Throwies are LEDs connected to coin batteries to create artwork with light.  We will have a number of origami options including participating in a lost bird project which supports endangered species awareness.

Squishy Circuits:  Make three dimensional artwork with lights and moving parts out of play dough!  

Creating interactive circuits with littleBits!  littleBits are electronic modules that snap together with magnets to make circuits.  Each bit has a specific function (light, sound, sensors, buttons, motors, etc), and modules snap together to make larger circuits. Just as LEGOs allows you to create complex structures with little blocks, littleBits are small, simple, blocks that make creating sophisticated electronic circuits a matter of snapping pieces together.

Creating abstract art with a digital microscope!  DinoXcope Art is artwork created using a digital microscope to photograph intentional arrangements of materials.  

Programming Arduinos!   Sparkfun Inventor's Kit with Arduino Uno & breadboards allow you to build simple circuits and control them using a programmable microcontroller.  Lilly Pad is a test board with lights and sound to which you can upload Arduino code.  

Programming interactive games with Scratch!  Scratch is a visual programming language.  Use colorful interlocking building blocks of code like legos to build interactive games and programs.

AND MORE!!!!!

Please contact Darcie Rankin, RES Enrichment Teacher at darcie.rankin@cesuvt.org with questions. 

We hope to see you there!

Our Place in this World is AWESOME!

"We all have a place in this world and this is ours!" cried third grade students in the final wrap up of their geography projects today.  For several weeks during enrichment class, students have been working in small groups to think about their geographical place in this world. From our town, to state, to country, to continent and planet....we have a place in this world! Students chose to depict their place in various ways. I was amazed at their creativity and ability to work together to design something that would reflect their understanding of place. Their work is shown in these videos and is also on display outside of the enrichment room.

Please enjoy these videos created using iMovie with the excellent pictures and recordings made by our third grade classes.

Mrs. Ankerson's Class

Ms. Darby's Class

Mrs. Ayer's Class

Thanks for watching! We would love to hear from you in the comments!

Andes Manta to Visit RES Third Grade

RES ENRICHMENT and SPANISH PROGRAMS  in collaboration with the FLYNN EDUCATION DEPARTMENT are excited to announce an: AMAZING THIRD GRADE OPPORTUNITY!

After our attendance at the Flynn theater on Monday November 2nd to watch Andes Manta perform,      ANDES MANTA WILL BE COMING TO RES!!!  

The four Lopez  brothers will spend an hour and a half in the afternoon creating authentic Andean musical instruments with our students. Each student will create an instrument to bring home!

This opportunity has been sponsored in part by World Music Record Label, Cumbancha (based in Charlotte Vermont), http://www.cumbancha.com/ and we are very thankful for their support of music and making at RES.