My students need projects to continue working on their creative building, to supplement the more than $1500 worth of Legos purchased this year for our Elementary Lego Club and to provide opportunities to explore robotics.
Our school is a solid mix of both rural and urban students, with many of our rural students exposed to agriculture and farming. This creates a strong combination of various skills and abilities. The students at Warner Elementary, like the students in the Middle and High School at Warner, possess exceptional work ethics and love to complete tasks and solve problems.
To meet the need in our school to provide opportunities for growth beyond the curriculum, we created two entities.
The first is Creative Interests, a program that allows all 4th-grade students to explore and experiment in an area of interest to them. Instead of providing this opportunity only to students who are high achieving, we have invited all 4th Grade students to participate. Projects in the past have included computer applications, video production, robotics, history, art, and paleontology. Creative Interest is in its 12th year.
Last year we began a new opportunity for our elementary students in grades 1st through 5th--an elementary Lego Club. Students work cooperatively (important skill for me as a school counselor) on various Lego projects, and then display their projects at completion. Currently some 40 students are involved in the Lego Club.
My Project
Right now we have a lot of excitement for our Lego Club. We have so many students (over 40) participating that we have run out of materials and projects for them to work on. The goal of this project is to generate creativity, cooperation as they work together in groups, and analytic skills, such as finding and fixing errors in their construction. Currently, the Lego Club has eight scheduled meeting times per week, with separate grades meeting at different times. Today, for example, two separate groups of students met. They worked on six different Lego projects and one student began exploring a robotics project. We have also included solar vehicles and electronics in projects students have worked on as part of the Lego Club.
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Gunn and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.