Science Olympiad -Event day

Finally, it was the day to showcase the Science and engineering projects aka "Build events". The elementary kids had been working hard on these and theory events for past few months. "A" was participating in one of the two teams from her school. The team was a good mix of 4-6th graders. All the kids were first timers and this surely was going to be a great experience for them, and it turned out to be.

Build events: The build events open for viewing were Battery Buggy, Mission Possible and Rubber band Catapult. The remaining build events - straw tower, write it build it were closed events and not open for public viewing.

Battery Buggy: In this challenge the goal was to design a battery operated automobile with braking mechanism, that could go in a straight line and can be configured to stop at a distance given during the time of competition. Here are some of the Battery buggies:



Mission Possible: This event challenged the kids to build a Rube-Goldberg type of machine to either raise a flag or roll a marble for 30 cm. A had participated in this event. Here are some of the Mission Possible creations:



Rubberband catapult: The challenge was to build a launcher for rubberband. This launcher had to be built configurable as the distance to launch the rubber band was given at the time of competition. Here are few catapults:



Pentathalon:
This activity is based on Marathon. The kids at one station answer science questions then do an activity and reach the next station where another set of kids repeat the same. These activities and the number of stations are announced on the event day. Luckily there was only one - event carrying marble in a spoon.


Theory events: These were Ecology, Road Scholar, Reach for the stars, Science Jeopardy, Disease Detective and Science Jeopardy.

Science Jeopardy:
This event was partially an open event. The initial elimination round was a closed one and top three teams were picked to play the science jeopardy with buzzers. This final round was open for all the parents to view.

At the end of the event our teams did well considering the fact they they were first timers. Hopefully it has boosted the confidence of the kids to perform better in the next Science Olympiad.

Building Rube-Goldberg setup

For this year's Science Olympiad my daughter picked the build topic, Mission Possible. In this the kids have to build a Rube -Goldberg machine to either 1) raise a flag or 2) roll a marble for a certain distance.

There are other requirements: they need to have atleast 5 simple machines , have 5 action transfers, the whole setup should be 30 seconds from start to finish, not more nor less.

"A" and her partner have so far come up with the setup below.




This is the final version of the Rube Goldberg device, which took 30 seconds from start to raise the flag.

Blog Anniversary

Its hard to believe that I have been blogging for an year! This also means that its one year since I started seriously involving my kids in science and art activities.

What I gain from this? Its beyond measure! The number of occassions that we have had a quality family time has grown significantly. My kids look forward to weekends, they love nature and hikes, are observant of the life around them, love to experiment and know what to expect from events that we attend. The art activities have boosted their creativity and imagination. When we had been to the recent garden show, my little one was amazed by the carnivorous plants and drew her own version of a bug-eating plant! My older one is using some of the creativity in her science olympiad.

I have supplemented my science activities with reading. Some of the books that we read present a great opportunity to try out the concepts, like the "Hello red fox!"

What I learnt? You do not need expensive toys or wii's or spend a whole lot in traveling to far off places to teach science to your kids. A local neigborhood activity is all that they need!

Honoring Rabindranath Tagore

When the history lessons about India's independence struggle are far down the memory lane, here came an event to revisit it.

One of the significant contributors of the independence of India and often referred to as "Gurudev" is Rabindranath Tagore. He was a creative genius with many achievements and very much modern thinking. His idea of Shantiniketan is something that we strive for today, bringing kids close to nature. His work in poetry and literature is immense.

An event was held over the weekend to honor "Gurudev" on his birth anniversary, May 7th. What else could be a better tribute than kids singing some of his compositions and reading some of his quotes and poems.

I was glad to have my kids participate in this event and have an awareness about this great soul.

Picture moment!

What is this serious discussion about?! Do parents need to worry ;-) ?

Easter egg hunt fun and some (wee little) science

On this easter weekend, how could we miss the egg hunt. Guadalupe river park had hosted Spring festival with some 40+ vendors. The usually quiet and lonely park was bustling with kids and adults. Out of the other egg hunt places I had picked this one as I wanted to combine some science activities along with the fun.


The egg hunt was in the historic orchard and the theme was eat healthy, as a result there were no candies or chocolates. Different colored eggs were hidden all around the orchard to symbolize various fruits, purple for plum, green for apple etc. The goal was to find eggs of all colors. In return they were to get a small goodie bag with nuts and dry fruits in it. The hunt actually got over within 10 minutes!

There were various kids friendly activities such as bouncers, face painting, bean bag throwing etc. There were stalls set up by Happy hollow zoo, Schmahl science and a few more, however we got to visit only 2 of them, the happy hollow and the tie-die one. Below is the python skin displayed by "Happy Hollow Zoo".


What mostly caught our attention was the tie-die booth as they used natural dies made from onion skin, walnut leaves etc. "A" used marbles to tie the silk handkerchief and then it was dipped and simmered in the dye for about 15 min. The kerchief was then allowed to air dry.


Although there was not much of science involved, kids had fun getting outdoors and enjoying nature to the heart's content!

Gem, Mineral and Jewelry show

The Santa Clara Valley Gem and Mineral Society organizes Gem, Mineral and Jewelry show once a year. The event is hosted for 3 days including the weekends. "A" has interest in gems and there were some kids activities, so I decided to take her forthe event.

There was a designated kids area at the exhibition and kids were given questionnaire. They had to read the information displayed on the project boards in order to answer them. There were various project boards displaying information on rock cycle, types of rocks, fossils, minerals, rock formations in cave, volcanoes, earthquake etc.

After the kids completed this activity they were each given a bag containing 2 samples of each of the rock types: igneous,metamorphic and sedimentary. The kids area also had a very good collection of different rocks. There were some demonstartions to find out which type of rocks float, erosion, parts of a volcano, stalactite formation etc.

After exploring the kids area went to see more of the rocks and gems and were awe-struck at the fine collection of gems and various minerals.

The kids had fun selecting their geodes, watching how beads are made and finished off with panning for gold We got to see a gold nugget which was actually found by someone while panning!