STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Chase Schwartz played the musical scale by dipping his finger into a glass of water, hitting a potato, a piece of Play-Doh and other objects.
“I didn’t know you could make music with a potato!” he said.
Schwartz was one of more than 50 fourth-through seventh-graders who took advantage of Community School’s free Innovation Day on Saturday.
The students came from all the schools in the valley to take part in six different endeavors, including learning about using GoPros under the tutelage of Community School senior Oliver Guy to making motors and learning about electric cars under teacher Scott Runkel.
“We thought there wasn’t a lot going on this weekend, particularly for kids, and we wanted to show people what we’re doing in arts, robotics and other STEAM-related areas,” said Katie Robins, the school’s admissions director.
The first 20 youngsters to register were boys—and they all wanted a shot at piloting a drone.
The enthusiasm was enough to make an adult looking on wish he or she were a student again.
“Easy, easy, easy, guys,” Robin Englehardt told his first group as they clamored to hold the foot-wide drone. “This is super fragile.”
“What happens if it falls in the snow?” asked Reese Kelley.
“It’s not going to fall in the snow. It’s going to fly,” Englehardt replied.
Englehardt told the kids to keep their eyes fixed on the control screen in their hands, rather than the drone.
“But you might look up every once in awhile to make sure it’s not going to fly into a tree,” he added.
The first boy took the controls.
“Cool! Twenty-five feet high!” he said.
In an instant the drone had climbed so high the youngsters were craning their necks to spot it against the bluebird sky.
“Bye, drone!” Scarlet Pringle waved.
“Now, turn it around and see if you can see Baldy from up there,” Englehardt told the pilot. “Isn’t that a cool shot!?”
Fifth-grade teacher Dana Covington presented 15 youngsters with a scenario involving being stranded on a deserted island. She then invited them to use a variety of materials including popsicle sticks, Q-tips and gum drops, to build a hut or fort to protect them against wild animals.
Before the hour was up, they also had to construct a bottle that they could send a message requesting help, build a coconut catapult to fight invading pirates, create a bridge over a crocodile-invested river and construct a raft to make their exit off the island.
When finished, the raft had to be able to float. The children also had to figure out the size of the base of their raft in square units and determine how many pennies it would hold before flipping or sinking.
“It’s pretty fun—not real school, although you learn by doing. And it’s a good opportunity to teach youngsters about corroboration,” said Covington. “When I was a child, we did things according to step one, two, three, four. Here, they use out-of-the-box thinking”
Tess Lightner and Riley Siegel created a piano using a banana, potato, orange that they hooked up to a computer via a Makey Makey kit, while other students created a sound library of jungle sounds, cymbals clashing and even the sound of sneezing.
“It teaches kids about creativity and computer programming,” said sixth-grade teacher Toni Coleman.
Science teacher Bob Polk showed the youngsters how to make 9-inch cars that run on solar power. And Trent Herbst had them sawing, filing and hammering away as they crafted pine box derby cars that they raced down a 28-foot-long soapbox derby track that Herbst’s fourth-graders had built the day before.
“It’s awesome,” said Paxton Sammis after watching his car fly down the track a couple times. “I like how you start from a piece of wood and make it into a cool car.”
The youngsters were all smiles by the end of the day.
“This has been a really cool experience,” said Ella Kopplin. “I never realized how electric cars work, and now I do.”