Hello Families!
I hope that your summers are well underway and you are enjoying a time of rest and relaxation!

I wanted to thank you for building such a warm community together this year, and I wanted to share all of the moments, small and large from the last few months of school! Here we go!

Temescalians used different ways to think about multiplication and division. We talked about things that come in groups, and created a chart so that we could visually see what we were talking about when making up story problems. Story problems can be hard to conceptualize. Upon initial attempts, Temescalians often came up with addition story problems because they did not ask about groups with the same amount of items in each group. For example, asking how many marbles there are when there are 4 in one bag, 3 in another bag, and 5 in another bag is an addition problem that has the answer of 12 marbles in all. However, if you were to say that there are 3 bags with 4 marbles in each bag, that is a multiplication story problem with 12 marbles as the answer. Same goes for when you are trying to come up with a division problem. You need to ask, “How many are in each group?” or “How many groups are there?”
Methods to figure out multiplication or division are to think about fact families or draw it out. You could use tiles to count out the “loops” (number of groups) or the “groups” (number in each group).

In science, we worked with magnets and learned more about the properties of magnetic forces on earth. We tried to make our own compass! We first magnetized a needle and placed it on a cork (We used those little cork things that they sell to put under tables/chairs so they don’t scrape the floors. One side was sticky so the needle stayed on the cork while it was floating on the water.)

We got to experiment with magnets and saw just how strong the magnetic force was before gravity overcame it. We noticed that the distance from the magnets and the paper clip increased when we had two magnets!

All of these experiments with magnets were to show Temescalians that there are more forces working on objects on the earth than just gravity. There are also magnetic forces and things that cause friction. Which was something to consider once we started working with axles and wheels and started creating vehicles. We first experimented to see what would happen if we had wheels (the red and yellow discs) and an axle (the green straw). Then, using a paper cup, we first tried to see if we could make it roll under the ramp successfully over a few attempts. The next layer of that challenge was to see what would happen if you had two cups and make it roll down the ramp straight. Then we gave them a penny to add to the two cups and Temescalians had to figure out where to add the penny (or weight) to make it roll down the ramp straight. The final layer of the challenge was to give Temescalians two pennies and for them to decide where to affix them to the two cups and still have the vehicle roll down the ramp straight.

A highlight for the whole TBS community was the site specific art installation, “That Was Unexpected” that teaching artists Julianne Hughes and Helia Pouyanfar created for the Block Party. Here are some snaps from the evening for adults and the Temescalians interacting with the installation itself. As they left, Julianne instructed the kids to tie a blue string on each other’s wrists, as a reminder of the experience that they shared together.

https://vimeo.com/840662843/cd3c792c3a?share=copy