6th Grade Miller Hull and NOAA

The sixth grade students had the unique opportunity, on January 24th, to visit the Miller Hull Architecture Firm in Seattle.  Miller Hull is the architecture firm retained by Open Window School.  During their visit, students learned how to incorporate sustainability into house designs and the benefits of “Going green.”  In addition, they took a tour of the office where they looked at various models.  Next, students shared their dream house plans with the architects, who gave them constructive feedback on their plans.  The two hour tour concluded with the architects showing students how to build a model.  Miller Hull has impressed by our students and hope they can see some of the models when they are completed.  Students shared their appreciation for what they were able to learn in such a short period of time. 

After Miller Hull, students went for lunch at "House of Hong". The food was a traditional Chinese lunch style called “Dim Sum”.  Some of the kids had eaten this type of food before and loved it.  For others, it was quite unusual and we had a lot of “What is this?”.  But they gave it a try and, for the most part everyone enjoyed it.  A few kids even gave chop sticks a try for the first time!

In the afternoon sixth graders visited the National Weather Service in Seattle.  We heard from several meteorologists about the fun and challenges of forecasting weather in Western Washington, such as our recent 'snow week'! Students deciphered weather map isobars, held a weather balloon, and saw the sophisticated online maps produced by powerful computers that help determine the forecasts that are reported to the public.  Visit http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sew/ to view some of these maps!