Children are innately curious about the world around them. King's Lower School science program amplifies this sense of wonder, teaching young scientists the steps in research: beginning with developing an evidence-based claim and progressing to learning to reason philosophically about natural phenomena.  

Students were tasked with building a skeleton using only the materials that they had at home. They were required to follow a rubric, which outlined what bones they had to present, the composition inside of bones, the types of tissues that would surround a joint, make two moveable joints and demonstrate their movement, illustrate a fracture and name its type and then show the types of muscles and name them.

The 2020 Summer Olympics may have been postponed but the Grade 6 Math Olympiad Challenge has begun. Lee Couch, Mathematics Faculty, proposes one challenge per week, which is an optional assignment for students who desire more math equations, problem-solving, and challenge.

Lindsay Silbereisen, Science Faculty, did her best to bring back some 'norms' to her class last week, during the first week of KingIsHome Remote Learning. "Normally, students arrive to class, sit down, and start their 'Do Now' warm-up question on Google Classroom. The Do Now is intended to review and reinforce content from the previous lesson. Last week, I asked them to do the same but remotely."

The week-long fair was slated to occur on March 9-14 at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT, but the global coronavirus pandemic forced fair directors to convert the fair from a traditional in-person event to a virtual science fair for the students' safety. Collectively, King students had a Top 10 finisher in every category in which we competed and King School occupied 10% of the finalist positions – a truly impressive showing!

It seemed pretty simple: build a boat designed to float. That was the task assigned to Grade 6 students in February as they tackled the STEM challenge. To prepare for the Build-a-Boat challenge, students conducted several mini-lab activities to test the concepts and make sense of the properties of water, i.e. buoyancy, adhesion, cohesion, surface tension, and displacement. 

Ryan Heaton '21 earned second place in the Health & Medical category for his Computer Science-based cancer research project for which he wrote code and taught a computer to discern detailed differences between subtypes of renal cell carcinoma (kidney cancer). Alex Lim '21 was chosen as a finalist for the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Specialty Award for his drone-based automated security system for schools and other brick-and-mortar establishments that will deter armed assailants without putting the human life of a security guard in harm's way.

Gouri Krishnan '23, Nadia Kucher '21, Clare Liao '23, and Sophia Leng '25 made up Team Alpha, representing King extremely well. Every year, over 50 girls from surrounding schools gather at Yale for a day of problem-solving, competition, and learning. Also, the King US Math team is currently in second place in Fairfield County for the 2019-2020 season!

Congratulations to nine students who have been accepted into the 2019-2020 Advanced Science Program for Independent Research and Engineering (ASPIRE) program, which is supported by the Advanced Mathematics and Science Study Program fund. This post highlights Harry Amadeo '20 and Alex Lim '21. Both students are reaching for the stars (literally) as they work on designing and building things that fly. For Harry, it's rockets and rocket fuel and for Alex, it's a drone. 

Grade 6 students examined controversial environmental topics and utilized elements they had practiced in their history and english classes. The preparation with their CEA - claim, evidence, analysis, is related to their job roles in English book club reflections and the inner/outer circle is similar to a style used in a recent History class debate.