Kinder Tracks Down a Pot of Gold

Well, apparently our leprechaun traps were good at attracting a leprechaun to our classroom, but not good enough to trap him!  He managed to get away with most of our jewels, but he was kind enough to leave some clues to the pot of gold he couldn’t carry.  The students used their Detective Thinking to find the pot of gold, and each took a piece of “gold” home – along with their clever traps.

The students worked some more on their Inventor Thinking by making some doodles into pictures.  (One student turned a couple of squiggles into DNA!) Then we turned our attention to an iPad app called Pettson’s Inventions.  This app is actually more Detective Thinking than Inventor because Pettson has already devised the inventions; the students have to problem solve to put them back together.  It’s a bit like reconstructing a “Rube Goldberg” contraption.  The students were able to complete all of the levels in the “Lite” version of Pettson’s Inventions 1, but parents might want to download the free version of Pettson’s Inventions 2 – or invest $1.99 in the full version of either one of those.  Also, here’s a fun PBS site that follows along that idea:  http://pbskids.org/zoom/games/goldburgertogo/rubegame.html

 

Kinder Brainstorms

We dug a bit deeper into “Inventor” thinking in Kinder GT today. The students learned about brainstorming (as opposed to brain drizzling!), and we practiced coming up with ideas as a group using the Popplet app on the iPad, and projecting it on our big screen. They were trying to find new uses for the object below (a staple remover).

Then the students did their own brainstorming by coming up with as many ideas as they could for what each of the circles on the sheet below could be. I wrote next to some of the pictures that I thought were particularly unique ideas. (You can click on each thumbnail to see a larger version.)

Next class (Friday), we are going to use our Inventor thinking to design some leprechaun traps. If you have any objects that are about to go into the recycling bin (such as paper towel rolls or empty boxes), feel free to send them to school on Friday to be used in our leprechaun traps!