Welcome to STEM class! Students in kindergarten through grade 7 have STEM class once per week. Throughout the month of September, the students focused on the monarch butterfly. We greeted our classmates each class period with the butterfly greeting. Students learned about the lifecycle, anatomy, and migration of the monarch, researched plants in our butterfly garden, used the Engineering Design Process to create enclosures that could support a monarch caterpillar through metamorphosis into a butterfly, and created programs with Scratch to code butterfly metamorphosis.
Butterfly greeting
Lifecycle game
 Butterfly symmetry |  Coding the lifecycle with BlueBot |
 | Chrysalis |  |
Migration game
 Enclosure planning |  Enclosure creating |  Enclosure testing |
Do we have the requirements to become a Monarch Waystation?
Our students in grades 4-6 also learned about the Mississippi River and went on a field trip through the National Park Service called Big River Journey. During STEM class, students discussed their knowledge and asked questions about the Mighty Mississippi and explored online modules about St. Anthony Falls, river navigation, and watersheds. Aboard the Padelford Riverboat, the students rotated through stations learning about freshwater mussels, waterfalls, river birds, otters, and aquatic invertebrates.
Learning on the river
 | Mighty Mississippi Mussels |  |
 Aquatic Invertebrates |  River Birds |
