Monday, December 16, 2013

Pumpkins and Cheer

Every year between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the science department at my school cracks open the 70s yellow curtain divider that separates the 7th & 8th grade classrooms and we host a co-unit together.  7th & 8th graders are put into mixed grade groups and we explore science in a very hands-on way.
This year, the teachers were very inspired by the show Punkin Chunkin on Discovery/Science channels.
With a little assistance from a 7th grader who had a book called Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction, which was able to give students some design templates to get started with, students have been building small catapults out of ordinary things and working to launch pumpkin marshmallows as far as they can.  It has been great to see their excitement with how far they have been able to launch their pumpkins!
One aspect that inspired me from the show was the basis of charity.  The Punkin Chunkin event money supports multiple charities both locally and nation-wide.  With this I put the word out to our fantastic staff, to see if anyone wanted to contribute to the cause.  With their amazing support and pulling out from their own pockets, we were able to gather $100.  From this, we told the students that the student group who shot their marshmallow the farthest would have $100 donated to a charity of their choice.  Last week, the student groups chose their charities they want to compete for.   They were very excited to choose their charity and many of them expressed that "that's pretty cool."  I'm so happy to offer students another opportunity to find a way to invest in the projects that we are doing.

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