STEAM projects are rich with opportunities to make connections between science, art, and math. Students become innovators and engineers while exploring new technologies. Grade 3 students learned about interdependent systems that help ecosystems thrive while gaining foundational critical thinking and inquiry skills. Grade 9 students honed higher executive functioning skills like collaboration, adaptable thinking, and project management as they dabbled in human-centered design. Lower School Science Specialist Beatrice Winter began the unit with a discussion, asking students what they knew and didn’t know about fungus. Students explored the different families of fungi and learned that they include mushrooms, molds, yeast, and lichen. Guest speaker Upper School Science Teacher Will Robertson guided the students on a mushroom hunt on campus, teaching the girls how to identify different species. They dissected mushrooms in the classroom to learn each part and conducted taste tests. Through their explorations, Grade 3 students learned that mushrooms are the fruit of mycelium, a critical structure of ecosystems whose main function is to convert organic material into nutrients. They discovered that mycelium is an interdependent system that helps organisms, like trees, communicate and send necessary nutrients back and forth. Grade 3 students exemplified their newfound knowledge by making observational drawings and a 3D diagram of the mycelium web.
Grade 3 students activate the mycelium in a mulch-like material called substrate.
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Stone Ridge Magazine
Once Grade 9 students delivered their 3D printed molds, it was time for the grand finale—to make the mycelium brick. Grade 3 students activated the mycelium in a mulchlike material called substrate and compressed the organic matter. When the bricks were fully cured, they spread them out on a table and explored what they could make with the bricks. Some students used hand tools to make ornaments. Others combined bricks to make sculptures.
It's a lot of hands-on experiments and it's very experiential and I never feel like it's a problem for them to stay focused or engaged. They really love learning about science and especially incorporating art and design as tools to understand scientific concepts. Science is everywhere. Science is about getting to know and understand the world around you. I want the girls to understand that they are scientists, they don't need anything special to be scientists. They don't need special tools to wonder about the world around them. Beatrice Winter
