Topics covered: conditional statements, loops, input/output, tiny bit of string indexing

Theme: Retro games

There were 3 phases to the escape room:

Phase 1: Initial problem solving to determine the required letters to crack a code. This included some thinking problems & some coding problems.

Phase 2: A decryption problem using a Caesar Cipher.

Phase 3: A final black screen where the konami code needs to be entered to win.

Phase 1

The website can be found here. 

In this phase, students were shown 6 different images, which each link to a problem to be solved.

The solution to each problem results in a letter. So in the end, they have 6 letters.

To exit phase 1, they need to fill in a google form with their code

The site provides an overview of each of the problems. In some cases, students were given scrambled code. In other cases they had a logic problem to sort out.

Around the room there were characters that related to the storyline and they provided the input for the programs. 

Final answer for Phase 1: ZZIIQWQWGF

Phase 2

The website can be found here.

Physical clue in the room -> Giant dinosaur with an exercise headband: 5

This phase was comprised of pseudocode for decrypting a string that’s been shifted using a Caesar Cipher.

Final answer for Phase 1: UUDDLRLRBA

The Konami code!

Phase 3

The website can be found here

It may be restricted for some viewers. Contact me at courtney.edwards@ocdsb.ca if you need a copy of the code. This is the video I used to quickly create the program because this was no time to reinvent the wheel.

This is the embed script:

<iframe frameborder=”0″ width=”100%” height=”100%” src=”https://wheatsmoggynlp.courtneyedwards.repl.co/?embed=true“></iframe>

Essentially, it’s a javascript file that displays a black screen. If the user enters the konami code, then they see a blinking excited completion screen.

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 8: (ant)Arctic

Family Activities

Density Exploration
In preparation for some activities with icebergs, we spent some time reviewing density. We built a little scale of sorts out of some cardboard. Then we began with a familiar material – lego. The kids checked out the two identical bricks and placed them on either side to see how they balanced. Next, we brought out two pieces of metal with the same volume, two nearly perfect one cubic centimetre cubes. One cube was aluminum, the other tungsten. The kids put one on each side and observed how the scale moved. This allowed us to talk about mass, volume, and density. On to the icebergs!

Icebergs
The first iceberg we built was using a silicone bread loaf pan. It didn’t have any really interesting characteristics, just a fun addition to the bathtub.

For the second iceberg activity, we took a frozen icecube and then turned it on its side and popped it in a space for another icecube. The result was a more interesting piece of ice that more closely mimicked an iceberg. The kids hypothesized how much of the iceberg would be under water and how much would be above water. After putting it in the bathtub, they drew in the actual water line on their iceberg drawings. Very cool conversation starter and it led to us watching some videos with icebergs flipping.

For the final iceberg, we froze a lego sabre-toothed tiger inside for fun. The look on kinder kid’s face when he realized what was inside was priceless.

Camouflage
We brought two objects out into the backyard, one green and one white. One kid hid the two objects and the other tried to find them, and then we swapped. This was a simple but effective demonstration of the usefulness of camouflage, as the green bowl really blended in with the landscape. The white ball stuck out easily. This led to some good discussions about camouflage and the changing coats of many arctic creatures.

Blubber Experiment
Our final experiment was a classic. We made some icy water and the kiddos stuck their hand in the water with just a plastic bag around their hand. We had prepared a double layered ziploc bag with coconut oil sandwiched in the middle. The kids then put their hand in this insulated bag and put that in the water and compared the effect. This is a surprisingly effective demonstration and was fun for all of us. It was a nice pairing with the Magic School Bus episode, where the students get blubberized!

Conversing with an Arctic Explorer
One of kinder kid’s goals has been to speak to an arctic explorer. We had two different conversations set, both arranged through friends of ours. One conversation with a young Inuk woman who lives in Nain is yet to come. The first conversation was with an awesome lady who works with Students on Ice. She has visited the Arctic and the Antarctic on multiple occasions and kinder kid was so excited to speak to her. He wrote up a list of questions and she graciously answered them and shared some awesome pictures & stories. This was a lovely part of the week and we are looking forward to the next conversation and the perspective she will bring.

Quiet Time Activities

We found a few larger packs of activities this time around and used many of those pages. Here are two we used:

Free Arctic Animal Worksheets
Arctic Animal Printables

Books & Videos

Books:

• Ice: Chilling Stories from a Disappearing World by Laura Buller
• Penguins by Anne Schreiber
• Structures in the Arctic by Ibolya Kaslik
• Our lovely new friend lent the kids this book after our conversation. It has beautiful photography & explanations: Spirit of the Polar Regions by Gerard Cheshire

Videos:

• Wild Kratz S01E07 Polar Bears Don’t Dance (Netflix). Neat note about this one, the kids (and us!) learned about pharyngeal pouches in this episode and we did some more research afterwards.
• Magic School Bus S03E02 – In the Arctic (Netflix).
• Lots of videos of icebergs & icebergs flipping on YouTube.

Next week: Shapes!

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 7: Insects

Family Activities

Exploring Ants
With the help of some pieces of bread and pretzels, the kids got set to lure some ants.

Once we had a few ants in hand, we transferred them to some temporary ant housing. We used the two sizes of upright containers from the IKEA PRUTA kit, nesting the smaller in the larger. We put a lid on the smaller one and then filled the space between the two containers with soil. We topped that off with our ant friends and let them get to work as only ants can.

While we all know how strong and industrious ants are, it was quite fascinating to see how much they had accomplished in just one day. The kids enjoyed playing with them on the driveway and watching them work in their temporary housing. After a day, we returned everything to the garden.

Nature Walk(s)
We did a lot of bug hunting on walks around the neighbourhood this week, but also managed to get out for a walk near the river.

We were fortunate to spot some water beetles.

And, unfortunately, also signs of the emerald ash borer.

The azaleas at home were abuzz with many kinds of bees.

I had seen a little demo for mimicking the way pollen gets stuck on a bee’s legs, but we were lucky enough to get nice and close to this little dude to see it firsthand.

Our littlest explorer has become very enamoured with insects and enjoys picking them up. She is particularly fond of beetles. “Look what I’ve found, it is beautiful!“. Here are a few of her finds from this week:

Water Beetle Rockets
After seeing a demo for soap powered boats, we printed out some pictures of beetles and made water beetle rockets. This was a very fun activity and led to learning for everyone. This demo can only be done once per batch of water, so don’t put too much in each time.

Up close with a wasp
An unexpected activity for the week came upon discovery of a deceased wasp in our bedroom. It was scurried onto white paper & magnifying glasses were out in a flash for closer investigation. A very cool distraction from the fact that we may have a wasp’s nest to deal with.

Bookmarks
We used this little bookmark template to spend some quiet moments colouring together. We read a lot of books in this house, so bookmarks are always in short supply.

Quiet Activities

To complement some of the learning about the phases of insects, we drew up this matching sheet.

Some other resources we utilized:
Colour by number
Bee maze
Metamorphosis maze
Addition
More Addition
Which is more? – This ended up leading to some good number talks in our house with the kindergartener

Books & Videos

Still making use of the gazillion library books we’ve had for this time the library’s been closed.

• Our preschooler loves reading First Words with a Ladybug
• We were gifted I See a Kookaburra! by Steve Jenkins & Robin Page and it has many interesting insects inside.
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is a beloved classic
• Scholastic has four weeks of learn at home resources. Week 3 includes some books and videos about Ladybugs and Butterflies.

Some related videos we watched:

• Magic School Bus Gets Ants in its Pants (S01E12) – Netflix
• Magic School Bus – Butterfly & the Bog Beast (S05E02) – Netflix
• Bill Nye the Science Guy – Insects (S02 E11)
  Pro-tip: don’t watch this while you eat lunch

Next week: The (Ant)Arctic

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 6: Aeronautics

Family Activities

Paper Airplanes
I mean what can be more fun than making and flying paper airplanes? Apparently having a book that’s been sitting for over a decade with fancy paper airplane templates, that’s what! The kids picked their favourite designs and went about following the intricate folds to create some pretty neat planes. The weather cooperated for successful flights.

Once we had some fun outside, I cut out three shapes from a large piece of craft paper and we hung it up for some additional target practice.

The World Record Paper Airplane
After trying some of the different designs, we decided to follow instructions for building the World Record Holder paper airplane, using this video as a resource. First we spent some time learning 3 key flying terms: pitch, yaw, and roll. There’s a nice diagram here.

Then the kids worked at altering aspects of the record breaking airplane to affect the pitch, yaw, or roll. It was fun to hear their reasoning about what impacts various changes to folds would have.

Whirly Birds
As a throwback to teaching Grade 9 science, we made some paper whirly birds / helicopters using this template. The kids coloured them in and then tossed them down the stairs. There is way more fun to be had with these helicopters in testing out what can affect their flight time, but there was too much sunshine for us to stick inside for long!

Quiet Activities

Here are some of the quiet activities the kids worked on this week, aside from throwing planes through the paper targets:

Airplane Parts with word tracing + colouring

Spot the differences

Addition & matching

90 (eep!) Page worksheet Package – We just picked a few from here.

The Fun with Mama package above inspired our kinder kid to start creating his own activities for us adults to do during quiet time. One was this cute colour by number

Books & Videos

We were lucky to own a few of these and others were borrowed from the library. (Extra lucky that one we got just days before things shut down!)

The World Record Revised Paper Airplane Book by Ken Blackburn

Airplanes and Other Flying Machines Ultimate Sticker Book

How Airports Work by Clive Gifford

LEGO Amazing Vehicles

Some of the videos & shows that suited the week:

Magic School Bus Taking Flight (S02E09) – Netflix

Bill Nye The Science Guy – Flight (S01E01 — how cool is that?)

How Does an Owl Fly so Silently? Super Powered Owls – BBC

SuperWings – Netflix

Next Week: Insects

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Also, fun (mind-blowing) fact:

Weeks 4 & 5: Prehistoric Creatures

Family Activities

Walking Dinosaurs
I saw this cool demo and we figured with a few alterations, we could make them look like dinosaurs. We cut out the basic shapes and the kids coloured & folded them and soon we had (kind of) walking dinosaurs! This activity is a bit finicky but really neat once it gets going.

Melting Dinosaurs
Using this Dinosaur Excavation activity description, we froze two little dinosaurs in baking soda eggs and used vinegar to excavate them. To make this (and other activities) happen, we borrowed half a dozen dinosaurs from a neighbour – thanks, Emily!

Dinosaur Footprints
We used this reference for the size of dinosaur footprints to draw out some T-rex footprints along the driveway. Simple + fun!

Digging for Bones
We ran out of filament before printing the whole body, but managed to get this T-Rex skull from thingiverse printed. We buried it in some sand and the kids used brushes and small shovels to dig it out.

Lava Simulation
This took a couple of tries but with some household ingredients we made a cool demo of lava growth. The idea and recipe came from a youtube video about creating a fire snake. This was a nice follow up to Bill Nye’s episode on volcanoes and some reading we had done.

Bird Sightings
We have been trying to run Beavers each week as a family, to preserve a bit of kinder kid’s regular routine. This week we talked about how birds are the closest living creatures to dinosaurs. The kids created their own cardboard tube binoculars and we went for a walk to look for birds. We found a few, but then found a giant heap of ants which was more exciting.

Drawing Dino Shadows
We set up some dinosaurs on white paper and tried to trace the shadows. We chose this as an indoor activity for a gloomy day, but then realized the gloom made shadows rather difficult. This didn’t quite turn out as planned, but hey the kids were happy to spend some time drawing in their pjs.

Hatching Breakfast
We inherited this box of instant oatmeal from family members after they left town. It served up some fun at the breakfast table for the preschooler.

Other things we didn’t get to:
I love these Cardboard dinosaurs and have seen other people make them with quite a bit of success. We just didn’t make the time to cut them out.

Quiet Activities

Puzzle
We have had this hand-me-down puzzle from a neighbour for a year or so. Kinder kid is old enough to do it by himself now so we brought it out for him to try during quiet time.

Some simple colouring sheets we already had inspired kinder kid to start his own book.

There are so many resources out there. Here are a few we printed out:
Triceratops Worksheet

Dinosaur Division

Dinosaur Find & Count

Counting dinos

Dinosaur Graphing

Dino numbers – up to 10

Practicing Left & Right

Tracing words that begin with d

Books & Videos

We have this collection of magazines from when I was a child. They were a subscription and I remember it being one of the coolest things ever to receive – anyone remember these? I have four binders full of mint condition dinosaur-packed magazines from the 90s, though I’m wishing I still had the glow in the dark t-rex bones. While some of the information has since been updated, the kids loved reading through them.

The kinder kid also practiced reading with Raptors! by Lisa McCourt

Videos:

Magic School Bus S02E03 – Busasaurus & S02E01 – Blows its Top (Netflix)

Magic School Bus Returns S02E01 – The Land Before Tim (Netflix)

Bill Nye – S04E19 – Fossils and S04E14 – Volcanoes (Borrowed from the library)

Cassowaries mini documentary from BBC Earth

Lego Jurassic World: The Secret Exhibit (We borrowed from the library)

Next week: Aeronautics

The info below is split up into the following categories:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 2: Space

Family Activities

Labelling Planets

The kids had been given a set of solar system wall stickers a couple of years ago. They’ve been up on our wall in the basement. Our first task for Space week was for the kids to write out labels (in metallic sharpies, of course!) for each of the planets and paste them on the wall.

Smashing Space Rocks

This activity came from Pre-K Pages and was a hit (ha!). Make a flour/water mixture, coat some cotton balls, and bake them at low heat. We put them outside and the kids went to town smashing them with hammers, wearing proper safety goggles of course. 

Paper Mâché Asteroids

Full disclosure: we started this paper mâché project to make Easter eggs. The kids hadn’t been too interested in painting them, so they sat for a week as newspaper covered blobs. When we started space week, we realized that the bumpy creations would be perfect for asteroids. The kids were much more eager to paint and precision was not a priority. Once they were finished, we hung them from the ceiling between Mars & Jupiter on and added an Asteroid Belt label on the strings.

Chalk Solar System

Using the Exploratorium Calculator, I calculated out a scaled down orbital radius for each planet. I chose a sun diameter of 1.2m, which allowed us to fit the whole solar system on our short street. We measured one adult foot print to be about 1m and then counted our steps to determine the distance between each planet. Starting at Neptune, we drew a tiny chalk dot, wrote a big label, and then carried on towards the sun. The kids took note that we had much fewer steps between planets as we began to approach the sun.

Once it was complete, we let some neighbours know about the drawings and invited them to walk the solar system, too.

Crater Creation

We had been talking about asteroids, meteors, meteorites, and meteoroids. We set up a fun and simple activity to explore how craters are created. We filled a silicone bread pan with flour and then covered it with a thin layer of hot chocolate. We headed outside and the kids dropped marbles into the pan to make craters.

I thought this activity might only last 30 seconds, but the kids loved it and asked for more and more marbles.

LEGO

We were fortunate to have been given a box of vintage LEGO from a neighbour. After researching some of the pieces, we were able to put together a bunch of proper LEGO space sets, as well as some creative space-inspired research stations and robots.

Space play dough

I made play dough and added glitter. Tada! Space play dough. Sometimes it’s the simple things.

Quiet Activities

For visual discrimination

Books + Videos

I will break up each week into categories so that you can skip ahead to what’s of interest:

• Activities to do as a family (experiments, outdoor activities, etc.)
• Independent activities that the kids can do during quiet time
• Books & Videos

Week 1: The Microscopic World

Family Activities

Our first week’s theme was born from pulling out a children’s microscope I had purchased at a consignment sale last year. While it is still a bit tricky for our youngsters, they managed to work it through.

Microscope

This isn’t the exact microscope we have, but it’s the same company. Ours only goes up to x900. Our first experiment was to look at the slides that came with the microscope. They looked at an onion skin, dragonfly wing, and the tip of a honey bee’s wing. Once they had looked at all three, we drew a circle using a roll of masking tape and the kids drew what they saw from the honey bee’s wing.

Quiet Activities

Books + Videos

I had come across some work by Geoff and Mr. Honner and was totally inspired by the awesome math behind the NFL Draft. I had never given a lot of thought to all of the calculations that underpin the trades that take place each year and once I got into the numbers I knew I wanted to bring it to the classroom.

For those (like me) that don’t follow football closely, the basic idea is that every year the NFL holds a player draft, where each team has the chance to on-board new players. There are a number of rounds, and each team is allotted a number of a set of picks throughout the various rounds.  The order of the picks is determined by how teams fared in the previous NFL season. (If you come in last, you get first pick).

The interesting part, from a math perspective, is that teams do quite a lot of trading with their picks. A team might wish to trade up, to get a pick earlier in a round, for instance. In order to do this, they have to trade off a few of their lower pick rounds.

In order to facilitate the trades, the NFL has produced a trade value chart, that identifies a point value for each of the picks. That way, if a team wants to trade for the 12th pick, they can sort out which trades they can provide for an equal value. The cool part? The chart is exponential!

In our class, we went a similar route to Geoff. I had students plot the Trade Value Chart and practice identifying the key features of an exponential function. From there, we looked at all of the trades made in the 2018 Draft. I went through every trade made in the 2018 Draft and compiled it in a Google Sheet. I

Note: I included trades that involved last year’s spots because I thought it made it interesting. For example, one team traded their first pick in 2017 (12th) for the other team’s first pick in 2017 (25th) & their first pick in 2018 – an unknown!  Turned out to be an excellent trade from the value perspective because the other team’s first pick in 2018 was 4th. However, you could remove the multi-year trades if you wanted. I omitted any trades that included a previously drafted player.

Students filled in the total value of each trade for the team that traded up & the team that traded down. They then had to plot the value of the trade ups vs. the trade downs to see whether teams adhered to the value chart – essentially is it a linear function?

I definitely didn’t execute on this idea perfectly, but I liked the concept for a bunch of reasons:

1. Spreadsheets are awesome tools and too few students know how to navigate them.
2. There is SO much math here. Think of the math involved just to figure out what trades you have to offer & what combination of those trades will yield the trade you want to make.
3. Conversations around using math to make real-life decisions!
4. More than one kind of function (linear & exponential) in one task is always a bonus.
5. There are great conversations to be had about the outliers – why would someone trade away a higher pick for a lower one? Why are teams sometimes willing to trade for something with far less value?

You can check out the materials I drafted (ha!) up here, and please send your feedback my way:

NFL Draft Pick – Intro doc & questions

NFL Draft Pick – Student Spreadsheet

NFL Draft Pick – Completed Spreadsheet

I figured the Nintendo Switch Dock would be a relatable problem. First, I had students share what they knew or noticed and then what they wondered. Their thoughts and wonderings led us well into the core question for the day:

What Interest Rate is Easy Home charging?

I had used the posted interest rate on EasyHome to find the “retail price” they claim and gave that information to the students.

Total Price: $19 per week for 104 weeks

EasyHome’s Retail Price: $1,236.55

Students hadn’t seen any lessons about interest or seen any interest rate formulas at this point so they were using pure problem solving and prior knowledge to solve.  Up at the blackboards, groups worked together to solve for the interest rate.

All were able to solve for the total interest charged pretty quickly. It took some guided conversations for students to get the interest rate: 29.9%/annum.

Then came the more interesting part of the problem. I asked students how much a Nintendo Switch actually costs to buy outright and it quickly dawned on them that the retail price EasyHome was claiming was way over the MSRP.

After providing them with this image, I asked students to solve for the actual interest rate being charged by EasyHome to see if it qualified as a criminal rate of interest under National Law usury under the Criminal Code of Canada (60%).

Students went right to work redoing the problem with the new Principal.

210%!

I mean, I expected it to be high. But 210%? It really is criminal.

The students were really engaged & enraged throughout this activity and it was a great entry point into learning about simple & compound interest situations.

The basic Google Slides presentation I used can be found here. A second version with PearDeck integrated is here.

Happy investigating!

We are currently seeking teachers who would like to try out some of the activities in their classrooms. We’re looking for feedback on the activities, in order to ensure that they’re effective and, well, awesome. If you’re interested, please fill out the form by clicking on this link or completing the form at the bottom of this page.

Here’s an overview of the activities (elementary activities follow):

Secondary School Activities

Elementary School Activities