Creating Ferris Wheels
Exploration Place Weekly Lessons
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Ferris Wheels Click here to view the slideshow.
Each week Mr. Patrick from the Exploration Place Science Center in Wichita, Kansas, teaches a hands-on Science lesson to the 3rd-5th grades at Argonia Elementary. The Kansas Star Scholars Program funds this project for all 3rd and 4th grade classes in Sumner County. The lessons support standards taught at each grade level. In the past years, each class works together in groups to do their weekly experiments or projects, but this year has been different due to COVID. Exploration Place had to restructure all their lessons so that students could do each experiment or project individually. I've been impressed with their extra efforts this year to continue to deliver excellent learning opportunities to our students. It has been a lot of extra work and money to put together supplies for each lesson. We all appreciate the dedication Exploration Place has put into this program!
Our latest 4th grade project was to design and engineer a Ferris Wheel. We spent several weeks working on this project. The first week was mostly conducting research on the first Ferris Wheel built for the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago by George Ferris Jr. Our reading series had a small reader that had the story of how Mr. Ferris designed and built his Ferris Wheel. The following weeks were spent building their own Ferris Wheel using paper straws, masking tape, scissors, foam rings, and a ruler. Their goal was to create a Ferris Wheel that could rotate around an axle without bumping on the ground or on their support base. The final results were quite impressive! Great job 4th grade!
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