Friday's Fun

We went to the permanent Ancient Egyptian Exhibit located in the fine arts building.  Students recognized many familiar daily life tools used by Ancient Egyptians and met a real mummy.  The university has a large collection of artifacts, we only had time for a fraction of them.  We could have spent an entire afternoon there.  Many children wanted to see more.  The museum is free and open to the public most days!  I encourage you to visit with your family.  

We then walked across the lobby and stepped into the control room of a recording studio.  

Dr. Jeff Cline showed us how he isolates, manipulates and synthesizes each instrument 

into a beautiful piece of music.   

 

 

We also explored the "live room" where the musicians play!  

We even had our own young musicians with us....    

Lillian played Mary Had a Little Lamb.

And Junwon played a lovely classical piece.

We had quite an exciting adventure this week.  

A special thanks to the parents for having your kidos ready for the trek this week, to Mr. Tommie Miller for all the Blue Line accommodations,  residency students for their help supervising, university faculty and staff for hosting us and sharing their knowledge, expertise and tiger spirit, and last but not least students for their respectful, responsible, and ready behavior!  

I am always proud to take Campus School students into the greater community.  

Thursday's Trek

Penny Hardaway's

 U of M Athletics Hall of Fame

 

 

Next Stop Life Science Building!  

 

First we went to a chemistry lab in the basement.  Students were able to discover how microscope slides were made and looked at animal brain and heart cells through a microscope.  

 

 

She's holding a cow's eye!  

 

  

 

 

  

This is a replica of the very first microscope!  

 

 

From the basement to the rooftop greenhouse!  

 

 

  

  

What a Wednesday!

Today we trekked to the FIT 

Fed Ex Institute of Technology

This trek began with 4 robotic stations.  

The first one is known as a humanoid - or a human-like robot.  It has robotic muscles and 2 senses vision and hearing. It is programmed to walk and interpret visual data and make movement adjustments.  It is also programmed to respond to sounds.  It would imitate clapping sequences.  

   

The next station was a KINECT station. 

 Infrared technology reads your body movements and a character on a screen 

imitates your movements.  

Everyone joined in the fun with this one! 

  

Next was a robotic fish.  The regular singing fish that was popular a few years ago has been manipulated by robotic engineers and has learned to respond to questions.  The kids actually taught it a few things about SpongeBob and Frozen ice powers!  

 

 

Next up..... A DRONE!  

  

  

Controlled by a remote control that's attached to his smartphone!  

Complete with GPS, images and lots of data. 

  

Ready for lift off!  

  

THANKS Mr. Peter for bringing in your cool toy!  

The last activity at the FIT was the spaghetti marshmallow challenge!  Teams had to use dry spaghetti noodles, marshmallows, tape and string to build a tower.  The tallest standing that could hold the jumbo marshmallow wins.  This took a lot of creativity, cooperation and problem solving skills.  I was very impressed with their accomplishments.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2nd trek today was to the muddy TigURs Garden.  An urban garden on campus.  Not much growing in the winter, however, our friend Mr. Art talked to us a lot about soil and composting.  

  

 

That bed is not dead!  

Planting grass in the beds over the winter keeps the soil and worms busy. 

WORMS, WORMS, AND MORE WORMS!  

 

 

 

 

Thanks again Mr. Art!