Gifted Open House

Avery's Gifted program held an open house on Tuesday night. Tuesday is like our busiest night, so Avery and I just went before her Cinderella rehearsal. We walked through her classroom and checked out her latest projects. They had to do a National Park binder, where they selected a National Park to visit. They had to come up with the itinerary, budget, where to stay/eat, etc. It was a really interesting project! Then, we saw her poster for her Shark Tank project, the Pencil Pal. She did a great job! We also walked through the 6th grade Gifted classroom to see some of the projects she will work on next year.

Shark Tank

Avery's gifted class is making a product "Shark Tank" style. They had to come up with a product that cost less than $10 to make and then develop a business plan and sales presentation. The product had to be something that solved a school type problem. So, she made a magnetic pencil case that sticks to the side of your desk.

Here she is with her prototype.

She didn't get to present her sales pitch yet because she was sick on Tuesday and didn't go to school. They go to Gifted on Tuesdays, so she'll present next week.

Extend Open House

On Wednesday night, the Extend (gifted) program that Avery is in held their annual open house. We got to see a few of the projects she has been working on and get a preview of what she could be doing next year in the program.

Their last unit was on the Iditarod, the dog sledding race in Alaska. As part of the unit, they had to build a board game. You start out in Anchorage and end in Nome, with checkpoints along the way. There are trivia cards and "test your luck" cards. Some of the test you luck cards include "your dogs are sick, lose a turn" or "your dogs are well rested, move to the next checkpoint". We played a few rounds with Avery.

Afterwards, we went out to dinner at Weber Grill.

Rube Goldberg Project

Avery's Extend class did a unit on Rube Goldberg. A Rube Goldberg machine is basically a series of simple reactions each triggering the next that results in accomplishing a simple task, so basically an overcomplicated way of doing something. The kids had to design and build a Rube Goldberg machine. Avery's machine was called the "Milo Feeder" and dumped food into Milo's bowl. We had a lot of fun working on this! It was definitely an exercise in trial and error!

Ancient Greece

Avery's gifted class is learning about ancient Greece... about the gods, mythology, etc. and also about the architecture. The class had to build a structure to hold books. Avery's group held the most books/water bottles/etc. Future architects at work! :0