6th-graders in Guen Vinnedge's middle school science class spent last weekend observing the wind each morning and afternoon to determine if there is a difference between the two times of day. (Spoiler alert, there is!) The sea breeze becomes noticeable in the afternoons in Southern California.

Student Kelson J. brought something extra to this science lab with the poetic way he recorded his wind observations in his lab journal. 

 

"When I walk outside, I feel like sometimes the wind is going east, north, and south. Sometimes the wind comes as a gentle push, but I think that it mainly comes from the east and north. It’s kinda hard to tell which way the trees are blowing but I think that it is mainly swaying from the east to west. For some reason the wind stops altogether like the wind gods are holding their breath. I noticed that, once in a while, a dead leaf would fall down and the winds would blow it around and it would sound like a knife scratching on metal. I found out something by standing behind the house waiting for the wind. I felt like the winds were going over the house and blowing on me, though it could just be that the wind was blowing in a different direction. I think that the wind, when it was blowing, sounded like leaves rustling around and sometimes there was a bird’s cry in it."

 

 

Next, Kindergarteners experienced the "Creative Engineering Design Challenge" where they were asked to build and test a ramp capable of using gravity to power a toy car with enough speed to travel all the way along and past a length of string included in their kits. Students used Seesaw to submit videos of their cars going down the ramp and explained their designs and the choices involved. Check out a few video snippets of their learning process:

 

Sinziana Velicescu, Class of 2003, is an award-winning photographer based in Los Angeles, California. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California with a B.A. in Comparative Literature and Film. Her photography explores human intervention with nature in landscapes that have undergone political, social, or environmental change. Appropriating architectural vocabulary, Velicescu disrupts everyday topography via careful composition to develop an elegant and humorous narrative to tell the story of place. Velicescu's award winning series, “On The Periphery,” has been shown in galleries internationally...
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