STEM Challenge

Today we finished up the STEM challenge.  We decided to do a modified version of this challenge - but for the full challenge click on the badge above!

To begin - we did some astronomy last week (and counted it for this challenge).

This week we started by making goop with cornstarch, water, and a few drops of food colouring.  We mixed it, allowed the girls to poke at it, then put it over a speaker and turned up the bass.  It's a non-Newtonian substance.  So it's solid when you poke at it/hit it with soundwaves and it's a liquid when it isn't.


Then we divided into three groups.

Sparkle Owl helped the kids fold themselves paper airplanes and had the girls run races with them down the length of the room.

Tawny Owl ran the microscope.  Our local library (after having you sign that if you break it you bought it) will allow you to borrow their really nice microscope, along with 25 pre-prepared slides.  The girls got to look at a blood smear, corn root tip, a penicillum and some other cool slides.

I ran the snap circuits station.  We can also borrow one from the library, and I have a copy, so in our groups we were able to have the girls work in pairs to complete some of the experiments.  Here's the link.  Using the kit they were able to make some electrical circuits - minimally they all got through making a light turn on, a motor spin and a sound start.