More than 80 elementary school students attended Levittown School District’s inaugural STEAM Night at Levittown Memorial Education Center on May 16.
“The evening’s goal was to provide opportunities for students to become involved with problem-solving activities involving science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics and to Skype with an astronaut,” said Assistant Superintendent for Instruction Debbie Rifkin. “There will also be additional STEAM classroom activities in the weeks to come.”
Students enrolled in two activities. They made solar system jewelry and space mission patches and took the Rube Goldberg Challenge by creating a simple system for moving a car. In the Lunar Rover workshop, students calculated the distance and speed of their vehicles, while stomp rocket participants propelled their rockets into the air. Students also worked in teams to create marble mazes and tested whether their egg would crack in the egg drop challenge. They designed and created clay boats and loaded them with paper clips to test buoyancy during the workshop called What Floats Your Boat? Like the Lunar Rover workshop, students created and then tested the distance their puff mobiles would travel by simply blowing on their vehicles.
One of the highlights, however, was the chance to Skype with former astronaut Don Thomas, who traveled on Columbia and Discovery during four separate missions.
Director of Science Kevin McDermott noted that the students enjoyed the challenges presented to them in the individual workshops. “The evening was also an opportunity for parents and their children to collaborate on an edu cational activity and to acquire a closer look at the district’s STEAM initiative,” he said.
