First Day of STEM Projects!

We started off this morning with breakfast at 6:15 and a devotional at 7. I have personally been very impressed by the Honduran food and the whole staff here at Rancho el Paraiso is very welcoming! I am not much of a coffee drinker but I could drink their coffee all day! We departed not too soon after the devotional for the elementary school which is only 5 minutes away. The classes start at 7:40 each day and the school day ends at 12:00. There was a 20 minute break half way in so our team was working with grades 1st through 6th for 4 hours altogether. The children have so much energy and it was amazing to see their excited and stunned faces after we showed them some really cool engineering tricks!

For the first 2 hours, the seven of us split up into three groups and taught grades 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. The last 2 hours were spent with 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. 1st and 2nd grade did the same activities while 3rd through 6th grade did different ones. I worked with the 1st graders with Mallory and Dr. Gwinn and then with the 5th graders with only Mallory. I am very happy I got to experience the joy of the kids doing every single project.

Working with the 1st graders, we started off showing them our tornado bottle. This was probably my favorite part because their faces went from pure boredom to pure excitement and astonishment! If you have never heard of the tornado bottle I'll give you a rundown. You have to connect to of the same size bottles together at the mouths using either a bottle connector or tape. A bottle connector makes it super easy because it screws on. If you use tape, you want to also place a washer in between the mouths of the bottles so that the hole between the bottles is even smaller. You do not have to use a washer but it gives a better and slower effect. Make sure one of the bottles is at least half full of water as well. For the students I started off explaining how when you just turn the bottle over so that the water is on the top, it takes forever for the water to drain into the bottom bottle. Every time a drop of water leaks through, an air bubble enters the water. This is because the air is trying to reach the bottle with water in it and gravity is pulling the water into the bottle containing air. This was the part when the look of boredom switched to astonishment. I explained how when you swirl the water in the top bottle in a circular motion, you create a vortex. This is because you are letting the air go through the middle into the upper bottle while the water flows down the sides. We passed a pre-made vortex bottle around the class for each student to try. It was very entertaining and each class laughed a lot.

The next activity with the 1st graders consisted of telling the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. However, Jack did not take the beanstalk back down. Instead, in the story, Jack leaps from the top and has a parachute. We then made groups of among the 1st graders and they got to make parachutes out of tissue paper/newspaper and pipe cleaners. they connected it to a dinosaur that we named Jack for the purpose of the story. The lesson was how wind or air fills a parachute and lets a person get safely to the ground rather than falling a lot faster with no resistance. After each parachute was created, we walked outside to a bridge and the kids dropped their parachutes from the top of a set of stairs. They really enjoyed watching them float down and I loved seeing them smile each time we dropped one.

To finish off with the 1st graders, we let them launch some rolled up pipe cleaners as "projectiles" using pre-made catapults. The catapults were very small and made of popsicle sticks and rubber bands. I explained how we can easily throw things farther than these catapults can launch them but really big catapults can launch objects extremely far, farther than anyone could throw. They had a lot of fun playing with them but I think the parachutes was definitely the majority favorite for the 1st graders.

The 5th graders were definitely not as hyper but were just as astonished when we started off showing them the vortex bottle. We passed the bottle on to every student in that class as well. We all realized that the girls were much better at it than the boys. A lot of the boys shook the bottle so aggressively that it came apart sometimes while the girls tended to get it on the first try with ease.

We also used catapults for the 5th graders but they actually got to split up into groups of two and three and create their own. We provided the materials and a demonstration on how to create a catapult and then went around helping the other groups. Afterwards we launched the projectiles, testing out each catapult and started explaining gravity's effect on the object being launched. We gave a few of the best ones to the classroom to hold onto.

Next was the balloon rockets! This project was very simple because the kids stayed in the same groups and was given one balloon, one straw, and some tape. After each balloon was blown up, the straw was taped onto the top of the balloon. We cut a strand of fishing line about the length of the classroom and the line was fed through the straw so that the balloon would fly in a straight line. This was definitely the favorite among the 5th graders because every group went twice! Each group had to be sure to pinch the balloon so they wouldn't lose any air and the balloons flew across the room when they were released! There were a lot of laughs and every group was eager to go!

The last activity was building a note card tower. This activity allowed the groups to use more creativity because the only rule was to build as tall of a tower as possible with only 15 note cards and 8 paper clips. I even built a tower myself in 2 minutes for the students to try and beat. Only a couple groups did and they had about 15 minutes and they loved knowing their tower was taller than mine! It was really cool seeing some of the creativity in the class and it was a great project to finish up on. Remember, triangles are the strongest shape!

Each of the groups greeted us with "Hello" and sent us off with a "Thank You" and "Good-bye". We got a lot of hugs from the students and I know I was kind of sad that the day was over because I had a lot of fun, maybe even more than the kids but that might be a stretch. I really wish I spoke Spanish just so that I could understand them and interact with them even more than I did. It was still a moving experience that I would love to participate in again!

The last activity our group did today was prepare for our time with the 7th graders tomorrow! We will be at the Middle School doing a couple different projects to incorporate Microsoft Excel with our lesson. The students will be making water boats and learning a little bit about solar energy so stay tuned!