001We worked on our project about colonizing a planet And the planet that we decided on that would be the most safe was Mars We’re building a space colony And it’s Ms. Rice’s room, Ms. Fleck’s room, and Ms. Coombe’s room. And we had 56 kids altogether We’re all building a little part of our own in the space colony We decided to do a story path project where the kids were given prompts, to develop a community They chose a character who they were going to be, and that person needed to be a grown up that lived in another country. So they had to research who their, their explorer would be. As a team, we decided we wanted to really integrated across the curriculum and as well build that sense of community amongst our grade levels and with
002our families and the venture program. I liked that we got to design our own buildings, spaces and that we got to be creative with what we were going to do with it. The most fun part was the building. Even though it was crazy. they're like people building different stuff You have to connect and you have to try to build a certain thing. It's not like arts and crafts where you can just go like doop doop doop. I made it heart, you cannot do that. You have to, like, actually build something that would actually work for Mars. They faced some challenges, initially, but it was really fun to watch them sort of work out. the social aspect of it and the hierarchy of who would be a natural leader and take over, who, was going to
003be a strong builder, who was going to be strong with the ideas. So it was it was kind of fun to watch that and just that collaboration and the ideas exploding as they were putting together their model. I didn’t know all of the people. So I didn't know their name, so it was hard to communicate We taught each other our names, and then we were helping each other out, and we were making plans to figure it out. We were all working together and it was a chance to hear everyone's ideas. I learned the most that working together is easier than working individually by yourself. When I looked at the big model. Each each team did a component. So when we looked at the entire colony, all put together and all of their little notes and
004their ideas, and you could see, like, this really came together and the way that they thought through all of the different components and what would be needed as 7 to 9 year olds was pretty, pretty amazing.