During the spring and summer of 2020, New Leaf Collaborative was able to provide virtual programs by holding on-line “camps” for elementary school students with our “EcoKids Camp” and “Science @ Home Workshops”. These programs, hosted by NLC staff as well as volunteer High School Student mentors, allowed students to […]
CSW Blog
25 posts
Famous auto races: Daytona. Indianapolis. Monaco. And now … Martinez. On Thursday May 30, the multi-purpose room at John Muir Elementary school was transformed into a workshop and racecourse for the entire 5th Grade class. Thanks to funding from the JME PTA and with support from Principal Kathy Frazer and […]
Fresh, clean water is a valuable resource. In our watershed lesson, we talked about the importance of conserving and recycling the water we use. Students used simple recycled materials to design and build a model “rain catcher” to store and distribute rain water for every day use — watering plants, […]
What do you get when you start with corks, cardboard, and a hot glue gun? Boats, of course! Our students worked in pairs to design a boat that would carry a cargo of two cups full of sand. After drawing their design and creating a “parts list”, our teams constructed […]
This year we are excited to start a special technology-focused program for our middle-school students. We started the year with an introduction to computer programming using SCRATCH – a graphically based system created at MIT for teaching basic concepts and enabling students to create their own interactive games, stories, and […]
After studying the anatomy of our legs and feet and the mechanics of motion, we asked our students to design and create their own shoes using cardboard, tape, and other recycled materials. Their shoes needed to provide the functionality of a basic shoe — protection, improved stability & balance, increased […]
Following up on our our study of the components and functions of the eye, our middle-school students got to examine them up close by dissecting cow eyes. After discussing how to safely perform dissection, the students were able to expose and examine the parts of the eye including the lens, […]
Continuing with our study of Forces and Motion, we created “Marble Mazes” to demonstrate gravity, inerita, and momentum. Students designed and created “tilt mazes” and then moved marbles through them using gravity. Did your marble roll too quickly and fly off the maze? That’s because the marble had too much […]
We see the sun every day, but have you ever tried to directly capture and use the energy it provides? By building simple solar ovens using pizza boxes, black construction paper, foil, and plastic wrap, our students were able to learn about important energy concepts like “reflection” and “absorption” while […]
How do our eyes and brains work together to form images? How can we see colors? Can we trust everything our eyes see? Can we create optical illusions? Can we construct a model of the eye that produces an image? These were some of the questions we explored in our recent […]