SCIENCE SKILLS
Students show their experiments at annual event
BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. >> Some of the brightest young minds in Ballston Spa showed off their skills this weekend at the Ballston Spa Central School District’s third annual Elementary Science and Engineering Fair.
The event, held Saturday morning at the Milton Terrace/Wood Road Elementary School Cafeteria in Ballston Spa, included kindergarten through fifth-grade students from four different local elementary schools. High school students from throughout the district were also at the fair reviewing the younger students’ projects.
A district-wide endeavor, “It’s a collaboration of the high school and the elementary schools working together to get students interested in science and engineering,” said teacher and organizer Darlene Nichols.
About 40 students presented their cardboard displays in the school cafeteria on Saturday, talking with event-goers about their various experiments.
Kids experimented with chemistry, biology and physics among other areas of science and engineering in their projects. Interesting subjects included strawberries, horses, and roller coasters.
Ellen Weller-Zembo, a local elementary student, discovered through her experiment how horses deal with windy weather.
“They turn their backs to the wind,” she said, proudly stating her findings.
Kelsea Davenport, a third grader at Gordon Creek Elementary school,
studied the chromatography of candy for her firstever science fair experiment. She investigated Skittles, Reeses and M&Ms, to find that brown was made by using all of the different color dyes. Afterward, she was able to eat some of the leftover candy.
Davenport said that science is one of her favorite subjects, and she would like to participate in the Elementary Science and Engineering Fair again in future years.
Regarding all of the projects at Saturday’s event, “They’re highly impressive,” Nichols said. “The students have put a lot of work into really trying to follow the scientific method and then put it into their projects so viewers can actually see how they utilized the scientific method to orchestrate their experiments.”
Instead of the event being a competition, this science and engineering fair awards each individual student for their abilities to explain different aspects of their experiments.
“For us it’s less of a competition, and it’s more about understanding the science and engineering practices,” said Ballston Spa K-12 Science Coordinator Diane Irwin.
This is designed to make the experience less stressful for the students, and focuses on them learning instead.
With this structure, parents are encouraged to help and support the students with their projects. “We want it to be a family experience,” Nichols said.
The Science and Engineering Fair is part of the Ballston Spa Central School District’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) initiative, along with Super Science Saturday in January and a Code-a-Thon in the fall.
“We want to do enrichment opportunities at our elementary levels to really get our students engaged in STEM,” Irwin said, “also working on those four Cs of critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.”