Washington County Enterprise-Leader
A Minute To Win It
Top: Trey Hill, left, and Walker McCumber, seventh-graders at Lynch Middle School in Farmington, are trying to pick up as many plastic balls as they can with a straw during the Minute To Win It contest at Science Olympiad. Below, left: Jake Bone, a seventh-grader at Prairie Grove Middle School, is using only his face to slide a canned drink across the table. The contest was to see how many times he and his partner, Asher Sam, could slide the can from one end of the table to the other end during one minute. Below, right: Caden Redfern, an eighth-grader at Lincoln Middle School, shoots his paper rocket to try to hit a target on the floor. He was participating in Science Olympiad, held last week at Prairie Grove Christian Church for gifted and talented students in Northwest Arkansas.
PRAIRIE GROVE — Almost 200 seventh-and eighth-graders from area schools competed in the annual Science Olympiad for gifted and talented students last week at Prairie Grove Christian Church.
The students came from Farmington, Prairie Grove, Lincoln, Springdale, Elkins and West Fork middle schools. The middle school competition was held April 18. Elementary students competed April 17, also at the Prairie Grove church.
The event is sponsored by Northwest Arkansas Education Service Cooperative.
Students compete in science games that are fun but require ingenuity and creativity to solve. In most cases, teams are given everyday items and students have to come up with ways to meet the objective of the competition. They try to solve the problem in the fastest time.
Schools accumulate points for the competition with winners announced at the end of the day. For the middle school competition, West Fork came in first, Hellstern in Springdale was second and Lincoln finished third.