Happy Dot Day!!

We had an AMAZING Dot Day!  

A huge thank you to everyone who sent in things to make our STEAM Dot Day a success!!!!  You definitely need to ask your kiddo about everything that we did today. :)

We started the day off with singing along to Emily Arrow's The Dot song (video - super cute).  We then had a discussion about what it means to make a "Make a Mark" and who has made a mark in our society and who has made a mark on the students.  

Then, the kids decorated a dot to put on our thank you banner for the fire fighters.  After the kiddos finished up their thank you dot they then got to design a ColAr dot.  These two items were the art portion of our STEAM Dot Day.  

When the kiddos finished up their ColAr dot they were able to make their dot 3-D using the Quiver app.  This app is super cool and free.  Your child is bringing home their dot that they designed today, and you can find the dot paper to make new dots here.  Make sure to check out the video of the technology portion of the day!

The kids also made their own Trail Mix Dot Snack which they got to enjoy while listening to read aloud today.  Of course, we had to read The Dot book by Peter H. Reynolds. :)

The next activity was decorating cookies for the firefighters and  each student got to decorate their own cookie to enjoy at the end of the day. :)

After lunch, we had a combination of science, math and engineering for our STEAM Dot Day.  

For science, we did an experiment with putting dots of food coloring in milk and then adding a Q-Tip with Dawn dish soap.  The dish soap separates the fat in the milk which then disperses the food coloring in different ways throughout the milk.  After knowing why this happened in milk (which has 8 grams of fat) we made a hypothesis that the same thing would not happen in Sprite (which has 0 grams of fat).  This is a really inexpensive experiment that your child can do at home.

During the math portion of STEAM Dot Day, we talked about estimation and that estimation is like making a hypothesis or a guess in math.  We estimated how many Dot candies were in a jar.  The discussion grew from talking about strategic ways to estimate to a discussion of how to solve 2 digit repeated addition problem.  A student suggested that we should count how many Dot candies was in one row in the jar, and then count how many rows there were in the jar.  We counted 17 Dot candies on the bottom row of the jar and then counted 8 rows in the jar.  So our repeated addition sentence was 17 + 17 + 17 + 17 + 17 + 17 + 17 + 17.  We then brainstormed ways to figure out this answer.  We grouped two 17's together and used tally marks to figure out that the answer was 34.  We then used base 10 blocks (tens rods and one cubes) to figure out that 34 + 34 = 68, and briefly introduces 2 digit stacking with regrouping to come up with the estimate of 136.

The kiddos had so much fun during the engineering portion of STEAM Dot Day!!!  Their challenge was to build the tallest fire tower that could hold a paper firefighter (nicknamed Firefighter Bob) using only the materials of toothpicks, marshmallows and Dot candy.  Make sure to checkout the all the engineering pictures - their first engineering project turned out awesome!

Lastly, we had a visit from Station 7 ladder truck.  We presented them with the banner we made and a plate of cookies in honor of them making their mark daily in our community.  They talked to the kiddos about fire safety and then showed them the different parts of the truck.  We definitely appreciated Greg, Paul and Tony coming out to RBE!  They did have to cut their visit short because they got a call; however, we got to wave them off as they left with their lights and sirens on!

We had an AMAZING Dot Day.  Make sure to checkout all the pictures and videos from today!!!