Problem Solving

Friday was our first problem solving day. Four of our other friends from the gifted program were able to join us, and we had a great time. I think the kids learned a lot, and I learned that EVERYTHING they do takes them less time than I anticipate. I started to get worried when 10 minutes into things Zeke and Haley were already done with 3 problems, and the others were on their third. They worked on logic links puzzles, brain teasers, giving directions to a partner to have them build something without looking at it, and discussed a Mars exploration trip and all of its challenges.

They came up with some great ideas to solve some of the issues of a trip to Mars. They wanted to make the astronauts live together in a similar sized area for about two months before the trip to see if they would get along. They couldn't decide if it would be a co-ed exploration, because as Ella pointed out, if they're gone for about 4 years, you could have babies in that time. Heather and I smiled at that. They also decided that they would take 5 astronauts and they should each have a different profession and would then be trained to be an astronauts. If I remember correctly they wanted a doctor, and engineer, 2 scientists (one physicist and one to study the planet), and a pilot.

I enjoyed watching them work on the lego structure assignment. It was very interesting to see how the different pairs worked together. For Zoë and Ella it was so important that they understood each other that they would hold up the piece they were working on and ask the other person if they were putting it in the right spot. I don't know Ella very well, but I can guess that she's a lot like Zoë in that it's very important to her that she gets things right and does what people ask of her. This was different from Haley and Zeke how liked the challenge of seeing if they could build it with just the other person's verbal directions. They were both a little surprised that the other person didn't build exactly what they were told. I didn't even get a chance to see what Aiden and Maddie did, because they were finished too quickly. I could hear Aiden giving some directions as I was walking around the other groups, and he told me that neither one of them were very close in their builds.

After all that we played a space trivia game. I was surprised how much each of them knew about space. All in all, it was a lot of fun, the kids had a good time, and next time I'll need to plan even more things to do!