Fri. 4:30 - 4:45 : Simple Stem for the 21st Century Learning Skills

Fri. 4:30 - 4:45
Simple Stem for the 21st Century Learning Skills

Presenters:

Keith Osfeld, Children's Museums of Houston
Rae Ostman, Science Center New York
Ali Stein, Science Cenetr New York
Michelle Kortenaar, Sciecne Center
Shawntel Landavazo, Musuem of Life and Science, Duram, NC
Maura Thompson, Thirteen WNET
Jacquelynn Accetta, Discovery Center Museum, Rockford, IL

This felt like a repeat of a session I went to last year - but better. I arrived and Keith O. said that we would be rotating tables and looking after different, simple program ideas at each table and introduced each of the other presenters who had experiments at each of the tables. He said we could spend 5 minutes and leave or th ewhole time at one table. I think we can use some of these in DC and family saturdays. Keith said he had burned all of the handouts and information onto cds, but forgot them. We could email him for drop box information. I will e-mail when I am back in the library.

Experiments -

- Share info about bird beaks and evolution. Then kids try their own bird beak (kids use chop sticks and toothpicks and under timed scenarios, use chart, try to grab as many items out of a cup (gummy fish) to see what is the most effective bird beak.

- Sid the science kid mobile. Give them a bag with straws, rubberbnds, paperclips, index card with holes punched out. Kids decorate and hang. Talk about balance, move the hanging pieces.

- Rainbow in a tube. Use large vials with stoppers. Mix specific amounts of acids/bases chemicals to create rainbow

- Name that zoom - Teach kids about magnification. Go to Name that zoom website show magnified pictures (we can use library book scans too). Make a twitter game - like 20 questions, where everyone gives a guess, response should be yes/no with clues - getting warmer, think about 3 legs.

- Nano experiment - Teach about different forces. Big cups and doll sized cup pour out water. Doll cup will not pour water because small - force of cohesion can overcome gravity because so small.
- Nano - duplo blocks with oven mitts. Right tool for right size.
- Nano - Magnetic field flags

- Find the rainbow, Special paper glasses and colored water bottles. Teach about light absorption and spectrum.

- See sound waves - build a speaker cup, put a balloon and salt on top

- Build a speaker, mp3 player, index card/spoon, cup and copper tape