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Goal

The goal of this project is to allow parents and students opportunities to interact with science and engineering content. We want to empower our parents to be able to fully engage with their students on content in the STEM fields and expose our students to higher levels of STEM integration at an early age to instill a love of challenge and the knowledge that they can tackle difficult concepts. 

What will be done with my students

Families will be invited to the school four times through out the year to engage in high level science and engineering activities. Each Saturday will have a different theme that all of the activities are aligned to. The themes are The Scientific Method, Chemistry in the Kitchen, Engineer this!, and Use the Force!. At each session we will discuss what engineering is and how engineers and scientists help our communities. We will wrap up each session by focusing on a different field of engineering.

For the first session, The Scientific Method students and families will walk through the nature of science, exploring science tools, following a science experiment procedure, analyzing data, and creating an experiment. This is content covered from grades K-5 at the very beginning of the school year. So we will have this session in the 1st 9-weeks of school.

For the second session, Chemistry in the Kitchen families will explore science and math skills that we use everyday. From "buying" groceries on a budget, to measuring the weight of produce using a scale, following step by step directions, measuring and cooking a delicious treat, families will discover that science is really everywhere! This session will cover nature of science benchmarks, math skills of addition, subtraction, and money in a real world way and will illustrate how matter can be changed. This session will occur within the 2nd nine weeks.

For the third session, Engineer This! Families will rotate through engineering challenges- building bridges, circuits, etc to solve real world problems. Engineering is not currently in our standards however when students can look at a problem like an engineer they can see it in a new light and tackle all of their subjects in new and creative ways. We will be having this session in the 3rd nine weeks.

For our last session in the last nine weeks families will rise to the occasion to Use the Force! to discover Newton's laws of motion. These are covered in our K-5 science standards and are discussed thoroughly at the end of the 5th grade year. After a brief introduction families will be challenged to create a rube Goldberg machine that solves a simple problem in a creative and unique way.  

Benefits to my students

The benefits of this project are exponential, our school has over 500 students. All of our students and families will be invited to join us. We are a title one school and most of our students come from low socioeconomic homes. By empowering parents and families to join us we will be assisting them in helping their children consider a different career track than they may have previously thought possible. We will also be increasing parent involvement with the school. Most of our parents work and have difficulty attending school events during the day. I believe that if these students can just think "STEM is something I am able to do." we will have made HUGE gains.  

Budget Narrative

Ziploc bags, coffee filters, permanent markers, and rubbing alcohol will be used in session one to explore air pressure and chemical reactions. For Chemistry in the kitchen will be baking with the families and will need flour, sugar, etc. The miscellaneous building materials will be used for the last two sessions.  

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