Show Your Love for Sycamore

Our 99th day of school fell on Valentine's Day and gave us reason for a big celebration! Throughout the day, students created art, celebrated teamwork, played games, and solved problems, all while focusing on the number 99. The day concluded with a Valentine's celebration full of treats and love for the community.

To show our love for Sycamore, students and educators collaborated on a whole-school art installation. Our art will be suspended from a big branch that Brie's group collected from the creek.

With Brie, students painted CDs in contrasting colors that will add brightness and reflectivity to our Adventure Room and represents the creative minds of everyone at school!

Students working with Emmarose explored patterns and the color wheel, as they strung beads on a wire that will connect their painted CDs to others for our art installation. Many students chose to create patterns - grouping beads by color, size, or pattern. P.C. referenced the color wheel, to find out which color was across from green in an attempt to create contrast in her pattern.

They also collaborated by counting the number of beaded wires and determining how many each person should make in order to reach the number 99.

At Paige's station, students collaborated to decide on the most efficient ways to stack the 99 cups into easily countable towers. Then, they worked together to design and construct a tall, yet sturdy pyramid.During the challenge, one group discovered that is was easier to edit and reiterate their original design, rather than start from scratch and rebuild. Another group stopped themselves mid-build to improve on listening to each other and compromising. Lastly, one group was able to determine the maximum size possible for the bottom row by using the formula n+1, with n equaling the number of the row.

With Kylie, students participated in the 99 Olympic Games! The events of the day included a 3-Legged Race, a Penalty Kick Challenge, and a Cone Throw. During the 3-Legged Race, students worked in partners to race around a cone and back to the starting line. As a group, they discussed how this event related to cooperation and competition and how 3 is a factor of 9.

For the Penalty Kick Challenge, students competed on 2 teams taking 9 penalty kicks! They discussed goals in terms of fractions (ex. 6/9 made and 3/9 missed.) In the Cone Throw game, students threw as many balls as they could in 9 seconds and calculated 9 points times how many cones they knocked over!)

With Jim, students created a Minecraft farm that could grow 99 stalks of wheat. They calculated the dimensions of an array that would hold 99 stalks and built their farm!

To top off the day, students decorated Valentine's bags, enjoyed a beautiful treat, and exchanged gifts with the community.