A Fourth Grade Look at Heroes Week

This past week was HEROES WEEK at OCS. It is a wonderful tradition of taking time as an ENTIRE school to raise money to reach out to others in need. This year we focused on Somatillo Baptist School in Somatillo, Nicaragua. It is a K-12 school with about 400 students. Their specific needs were scholarships, new roofing, paint, tile repair, furniture, and fencing. Every day there were loads of events to raise money. Every grade got involved. How exciting to go to chapel and find out the grand total our school raised: Wow! That is ALOT of money----$57,443.64!!!!!
We are pretty amazed and pleased that God used our creative little class to help make that possible.
We were reminded that God used our entire school to make a difference for God's kingdom---one school in Oklahoma reaching out to one school in Nicaragua, one student at OCS could help one student in Nicaragua go to school for a $150 a year! We are one in Christ and we can reach around the globe to help spread Christ's name to the world. UNO POR UNO!!! ONE FOR ONE!!!
So, just HOW did our class contribute? Well, we made some wonderful items for the outdoor market each day during recess including signs and posters.....

earrings, bracelets and hair bows,
food and more food,
more bracelets,
a bird seed search that was also part of a fishing game (very clever).

There were pencils, ducktape wallets,
hoola hoops, bubbles,
more food and more food,

and more lovely accessories.
Dog tags that sold out quickly,
and the coolest rope bracelets ever!
One class worked, saved, and prayed. One class collected $630.00 dollars and will have helped 4 kids in Nicaragua attend school next year. Thank you, Jesus, for giving us this opportunity to help others in your name. Amen.

Experimenting With a Fulcrum, Effort and Load

"Forces and Machines" is the title of our current science unit. To help us see how simple machines make work easier, we looked specifically at how different levers function. Some examples were scissors, wheelbarrows, nutcrackers, a paint-can opener, and a crowbar. We learned that a lever is a bar that turns on a point and the point is the fulcrum. We decided to find out how effort is affected when considering the distance between the effort and the fulcrum.
We set up our materials. The cup closest to zero on the ruler was labeled "Effort"and the cup at the other end of the ruler was labeled "Load". The spool was the fulcrum. Pennies were to be added or removed from the "Effort" depending on where the fulcrum was placed. We first placed ten pennies in each cup to balance both sides. Nice balancing! Next we wrote our hypothesis: "The closer the fulcrum is to the effort cup, the (fill in the blank with either "more" or "fewer") pennies are needed in the cup.

When we moved the spool of thread to 13cm on the ruler, we found that we could remove several pennies from the "effort" cup. Less work!!!!
Moving the fulcrum to 18cm meant even fewer pennies in the "effort" cup (actually just 2).
Moving the fulcrum to the 10 cm mark on the ruler meant more pennies (representing effort) were needed.
We concluded that when the fulcrum was closer to the effort, we needed more effort (pennies). That means if we use a lever to try to move a heavy object, we need to move the fulcrum so there is the most distance possible between the effort and the fulcrum.
Oops! Looks like we have a few corrections to make on this person's results on the chart. Maybe we better try this experiment one more time on Monday, just to be sure!!!!!