Part II - So you think you can science?

litmus paper

Egg Drop!

The 7th graders made
straw bridges

Our Math/Science Fair was the second part of the ‘Busiest week of the year thus far.’

We definitely over-planned activities, but that was quite all right. The day started off with me giving a rousing morning worship talk – and by talk I mean yell. I know how Mr. O felt when he was trying to talk over all us kids at TCJA from kindergarten to tenth grade during assembly, it’s so annoying when the kids aren't listening to you at all and they’re all talking in Chuukese. Oh, wait a minute, that sounds like a few of the classes I teach.

Watching a play by the 6th grade

Madison and Defitson
working on their Rube
Goldberg project

Some seniors and their project

As island life would have it, after the kids did a math game that Alfred had made it began to rain… good thing we’re all used to it! We then had all the groups go around to eight different stations, and I was in charge of two presentations. So I spent that hour running back and forth between those two classrooms making sure that they were both running smoothly. Thank goodness for solid students who keep things going! For the biology presentation the 10^th grade girls told the rest of the students a few things about different endangered animals, and they fixed up the microscope with a couple slides – “Anybody want to see blood?!” I have a few hand-held microscopes that are great at looking at shirts, flowers, and bugs with, and so the kids enjoyed looking through those. Ants are pretty cool, as I know my brother would agree! For the other presentation I had the 9^th and 11^th graders join together, and we showed off models of atoms out of paper mache, and then we talked a bit about pH and how to use litmus paper to figure out if a substance was acidic or basic. And the kids were super excited to stick those tiny pieces of paper in the vinegar, soap, and lemon juice and be able to tell me what the pH was. I love how excited these kids can get! Some of the other stations were a homemade ice-cream station, a design-an-animal station, and an ecosystem station.

For the week before the fair the seniors had been working on constructing some Rube Goldberg machines, which they showed off in front of the rest of the school. The machine was supposed to pop a balloon, and two of the three machines were successful under pressure. The last thing that we did that day was an egg drop. We divided them all back up into the groups, gave them a bagful of random things and told them to have at it. We must have a school full of potential engineers, because I think only one of the contraptions didn't work…It was a crazy day, but successful.