Amaz-ing

 Marble Maze- Cognitive skills

Steps to making the Marble Maze

First we created a base for our maze.  We created some concentric circles inspired by Kandinsky, using felts, pastels or pens.

 Next we cut our circles into smaller squares and rectangles and glued them onto the base of our cardboard.  We created a new pattern with them.

Then we added straws and cardboard and made a maze that a marble could run through.  We added extra decorations to enhance the look of our game. 

Then we tested them.

Amaz-ing!

Marble Maze

We have been learning about mazes and how they can help us boost our brain by :

• Problem solving

• Remembering

• Building focus

• increase our concentration

• and make our minds grow greater!

They created their own marble mazes using simple materials like straws and cardboard.  The background was created by using concentric circle art that they had made, inspired by artist Kandinsky.

As they designed and constructed the maze, they had to consider the placement of walls, the layout of the paths, and the positioning of obstacles to create a solvable puzzle. This process encouraged them to think logically and plan ahead. 

Building the mazes helped them to enhance their critical thinking and problem-solving abilities while having a lot of fun!

Coding - Making Mazes

 I am back at school teaching after living in Fiji for the last 6 months!!  This term I am teaching Year 3.

Maze Coding

We are looking a mazes.  We discussed what a maze was and how we had to really use our brains to problem solve and think about how we were going to get to the finish.  After the class completed their own paper maze they created their own by either using squared paper or a lego base.  Once they had created their maze they then wrote a code to show how their maze could be completed.

They had to have a start and a finish and a clear path

They wrote the code on  a white board This is an example of different ability levels, some chose to use arrows and numerals.

This was the progression from paper maze to duplo, then written code.

This student was working at the level of still drawing lots of arrows instead of giving numerals.

Some students added lots of extras to their maze, such as health or booby traps.  Others had tasks to complete along the way.

Google Draw ART-

 We are learning to create art using the tools in  google draw.

Steps:

1.   We took a photo of ourselves or chose an image from the internet
2.  We then used the curved line to go around each shape at a time, e.g around the face, then the eye etc
3.    After we had put a line around each line we would then set the colour to transparent.
4.   When we were finished outlining all of the shapes we then chose a different colour for each shape.
5.   We made sure to improve our work by using the gradient tool.
6.   To finish we chose a colour for our background.

Pick-a-path google slide stories

Writing Pick-a-path stories

Using google slides on Chromebooks

• We have been learning to use google slides.  We brainstormed some different outcomes of common fairy tales and created a pick-a-path story for the reader.

• We learnt how to improve our writing by adding adjectives and nouns to extend our sentences.

• We used colour, images and changed the style of the font to improve the look of our story.

• We learnt how to create links to lead the reader to different chosen slides.

Click on the links to view some of our stories - These student's are Year 3 & 4.

• Luna and Coco's adventure

• Little Red's adventure

• The 2 wise Pigs

Google Drawing and Google Doc

We combined writing with our art.  Look at our cool descriptive writing to match the Taniwha eyes we created on google drawings.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

Today's session was an introduction to Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR).  Surprisingly none of the students new what AR was but when we discussed it some more they realised that they have been using it without actually knowing what it was!

Using unity the students controls turned into gloves.  They were challenged select different shapes and build something with it.  It was quite tricky!

Using AR the students were able to make the merge cube come alive and were able to build blocks on top of it.

The students chose a picture to colour.  They then put the iPad over top of the picture to make it come to life!  They got a real surprise to see how it interacted

Quiver is a great app that has lots of Educational options to relate to themes in the classroom

The volcano erupted.                                                            Wow the world map turned into a globe!