Friday, October 31, 2014

Erupting with excitement!

Khalil, Amir, Keon, Tavon, and Marquis building the base of their volcano.

This week, the Spiders were fully engaged in STEM while learning about volcanoes. We had a pretest to assess our knowledge on what we had already known about volcanoes. The scores of the pretest were not very good on the first go around... The students had an opportunity to read an article about volcanoes as a class and make corrections to their quiz. Afterwards, we watched videos of real volcanoes erupting. We also identified what was happening in the videos using vocabulary from the article. The next day, the students were given directions and materials to build a group volcano. With minimal support, the students successfully built two volcanoes using a dough mixture, with food-colored vinegar and baking soda "lava." The Spiders were fully emerged in the activity and put their expert volcano knowledge to the test! This is an activity they will always remember!

Erupting with success!

Jaylan, Malachi, Jamal, and Timothy working well as a team  to build the base of their volcano.

Friday, October 10, 2014

Bringing some BUGS flavor to Whole Foods



 When BUGS students found out that the Whole Foods in Harbor East was donating 5% of their sales on September 30th to the program, they wanted to make sure that Whole Foods' customers knew what the BUGS program is all about. So, we packed up our homemade granola, crafts, garden seedlings and homegrown tea, and set up right by the checkout line!
Besides having the opportunity to share their BUGS experience with customers, our students also got to sample a squash salad and some carrots with Ginger hummus. Everyone was impressed by our students, and one customer even offered to buy us a snack. By the end of the day, the BUGS had won over customer and employee alike, and had eloquently shared in their own words the impact that the BUGS program can have on lives of students in Baltimore.