STEM Night at the Museum

All students of Raymond Academy were invited to attend it's 2nd Annual STEM Night. This year's theme was Night at the Museum. The volunteers dressed up as important historical figures while students and their families traveled throughout our "museum" exploring different activities that are specifically tied to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. The icing on the cake was special guests: The MakrU Bus Crew! 

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Students Explore STEM with Fun, Games and Sweet Treats!

The STEM Night at the Museum experience consisted of nine different STEM activities, a tour of the MaKrU Bus and a round of STEM Night KAHOOT! Below is a detailed summary of the different activities students participated in:

• Shoot the Marshmallow (with mini Marshmallow Shooters). The goal was to place the marshmallow in the cup and shoot it on our runway. The VIPs (teacher volunteers) measured the distance the marshmallow traveled. 

• Call Me! (using a string phone) Speaking into the cup creates sound waves which are converted into vibrations at the bottom of the cup. The vibrations travel along the string and are converted back into sound waves at the other end so your friend can hear what you said. Sound travels through the air but it travels even better through solids such as your cup and string, allowing you to hear sounds that might be too far away when traveling through the air.
• Oh the Places You Can Go! Using Google Cardboard. Google's Cardboard, the little folded-cardboard VR (virtual reality) viewer that works with just about any phone, is the first VR platform targeted at children. At this station, students toured Egypt, the rainforest, rode a rollercoaster and traveled in an undersea adventure! 
• We Scream for Ice Cream! Students observe the different properties of matter and compared liquids and solids by making fresh ice cream! Students observed the change in substances as the liquid became a solid. 
• Building Paper Hoop Gliders. Students were asking, "Can we really call that a plane?" It may look weird, but flies surprisingly well. The two sizes of hoops help to keep the straw balanced as it flies. The big hoop creates “drag” (or air resistance) which helps keep the straw level while the smaller hoop in at the front keeps your super hooper from turning off course. 
• Surface Tension. The mission at this station was to observe the surface tension of water by placing as many drops of water on a penny as you could without them falling off. Students had to complete three trials and find the average. 
• Math JENGA Challenge. To give kids a challenge (or two) we asked them their math facts (addition/multiplication). The students had to pull a tile from the tower (very carefully), answer the fact and help the tower grow. Surprisingly, kindergartners LOVED pulling and building on the Math Towers...and their parents LOVED them yelling their math facts!
• Constructing Pinwheels with K'Nex. The students mission was to build and design simple machines and observe how different lengths of blades affect the speed and movement.
• Exploring AR (Augmented Reality) using Quiver. Students selected various sheets from Quiver Education, colored the page and used the Quiver App to turn the coloring sheet into a 3D image in front of your eyes! Students watched volcanoes erupt and the temperature rose (on their command), was able to turn the globe to explore the continents, and for our younger friends--they controlled a fire truck and a bird!

The MaKrU Bus Came to Raymond!

The STEM Night at the Museum Experience was a exciting but pushed BEYOND excitement with the arrival of the MakR Bus! Mary Jones and Crew took our students and their families through a mini maker land full of Spheros, Makey-Makeys, Ozobots and more! Everyone (including the teachers and administrators) became kids at play during their MakR Bus tour!

To conclude the STEM Night at the Museum, everyone joined in for a game of Kahoot! The questions summarized the experience asking about the students favorite activity, what they learned about at the different stations and if they would return again next year! It was a great experience for everyone (students, their families, the teachers and all the administrators!), full of excitement, lots of learning, exploring and inquiry!