Last Friday, June 10 was Science Fun Day at Quest Elementary School! Science Fun Day is a day dedicated to learning science in a hands-on and interesting way. Students traveled around the school building, the nearby creek and outdoor classroom to learn about science. Among the opportunities were: demonstrations about wildlife, the science behind a rollercoaster, steam engines, buoyancy, chemistry, making chewing gum, forces and motion, reducing friction, air powered rockets, egg drops, water testing, paper making, recycling, states of matter and scores of other ideas - AND, my [biased] personal favorite, getting to interact with a thermal camera! These demonstrations were led by local science professionals, parents whose profession involve science, high school students, teachers, Quest students, and (of course) yours truly. This was a new event for CIS to participate in; I was introduced to it through a personal friend who is a teacher at Quest who invited me to present (yay!).
I presented 5 times for 35 minutes each to groups of around 15 5th and 6th graders. It is a lot of fun to interact with kids that age! I am however admittedly not as experienced presenting to students at that level, so it is a learning experience for me as well as I get more knowledgeable about what subjects they are familiar with and which they are not - and also what they are and aren't comfortable with doing. For example, I had no fewer than 2 volunteers that REALLY could not stand to hold onto an ice cube - something I've never encountered before and which definitely took me by surprise (and made me feel bad).
Nevertheless the experiments in front of the FLIR were definitely highly enjoyed (as were the stickers, as always!). One of the big hits was a new addition to my bag of tricks, which included pouring hot water into a tin cup, ice cold water into another, and then combining them into a third. Even after the water is poured out, the cups retain their temperature. It was definitely neat to witness. At the end of the sessions I invited the students to have their pictures taken with the FLIR and printed out on a photo they could keep. (Unfortunately, the first group didn't have a chance to do this, since the introduction session ran over by 15 minutes and session 2 was cut short.)
All in all, what a fun day and great way to get kids interested in SCIENCE! Many thanks to Quest for including me as part of their day.
I presented 5 times for 35 minutes each to groups of around 15 5th and 6th graders. It is a lot of fun to interact with kids that age! I am however admittedly not as experienced presenting to students at that level, so it is a learning experience for me as well as I get more knowledgeable about what subjects they are familiar with and which they are not - and also what they are and aren't comfortable with doing. For example, I had no fewer than 2 volunteers that REALLY could not stand to hold onto an ice cube - something I've never encountered before and which definitely took me by surprise (and made me feel bad).
Nevertheless the experiments in front of the FLIR were definitely highly enjoyed (as were the stickers, as always!). One of the big hits was a new addition to my bag of tricks, which included pouring hot water into a tin cup, ice cold water into another, and then combining them into a third. Even after the water is poured out, the cups retain their temperature. It was definitely neat to witness. At the end of the sessions I invited the students to have their pictures taken with the FLIR and printed out on a photo they could keep. (Unfortunately, the first group didn't have a chance to do this, since the introduction session ran over by 15 minutes and session 2 was cut short.)
All in all, what a fun day and great way to get kids interested in SCIENCE! Many thanks to Quest for including me as part of their day.
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