Hundreds of students and parents gathered in the Brown Elementary School gymnasium Thursday evening for the school’s third annual STEAM Fair. The event was hosted by the school’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) in partnership with Principal Mary Maxfield and the school’s teachers.
About 215 students from kindergarten through third grade signed up for the STEAM Fair, and there were about 160 projects total since some students chose to work together.
“My favorite part is that, in life and in education, we end up working on projects, and this is some of the kids’ first opportunity outside school to work on a group project together,” said Susan Koelle, event organizer. “I think it’s one of the best ways to get to know people, by working together, and it’s really cool to see.”
PTO Co-President Kate Schmeckpeper said she always looks forward to seeing what projects the students come up with, adding that “kids have the most creative imagination.”
Projects ranged from “How Strong is Raw Pasta?” to “What Makes Basketballs Bounce?” to “Osmosis with Celery: How Plants Absorb Water.” There were plenty of animal-related projects as well as a volcano or two.
First grader Griffin Cahalane worked with Teagan Horvath to answer the question “How do seahorses breathe underwater?” Griffin said they chose this idea because they were learning about seahorses in class, and it piqued his interest.
To answer the question the duo posed, Griffin explained, “They breathe with their gills. The nose is called a snout. They use it to eat. Sea horses suck food with their snouts.”
Griffin and Teagan’s project was the first that vice principal and first-time STEAM Fair judge Matt Manfredi learned about, and he said it was definitely one of his favorites. He added that he got the chance to learn about axolotls and how to make an egg’s shell disintegrate with vinegar, among many other topics as well.
“The work that a lot of our kids are doing is incredible. To see how dedicated they are to the whole process and coming up with an idea, then taking time to do it and come and present in front of a bunch of people they never met before is pretty awesome.
“There’s some real science out there,” Manfredi said. “I learned a lot tonight. It was pretty wild. It’s fun to see the kids find something and, explore it and get to the bottom of it and then tell everybody all about it. It was a really fun experience. It’s my first time judging tonight. It’s great to see all these wonderful posters.”
Third graders Sarah Flynn and Piper Lupa asked, “What happens to gummy bears when we put them in different types of liquids?” They found out: water makes the gummy bears bigger, salt makes the bears smaller, vinegar makes the bears dissolve and sugar makes them a little bit bigger and slimier.
“The reason for this is osmosis,” Piper explained. “Osmosis is like: When there’s a more crowded area, it’s leaving the area to get less crowded. In the plain water, there was more water in the cup, so it went into the gummy bear, and it got bigger.”
They agreed that the most fun parts of doing this experiment were eating their extra gummy bears and squishing the bears.
Principal Mary Maxfield credited the jam-packed gym to how much the community supports the school and its students.
“They support learning, they care about making sure that their kids know that they support their learning — and that just means the world to us,” Maxfield said. “I’m really proud of each and every student who took a risk to do this and put themselves out there.”