A huge THANK YOU goes out to the Polk Education Foundation and their supporters for the STEaMing UP Polk Grant. Through this grant our STEM Lab was able to add STEM Kits for Kindergarten and 1st grade students. These boxes allowed students to explore different activities with magnets, compare if objects would sink or float, and motion. The students worked in small groups and were able to explore each station. In the magnetic station the students found ways to move a mouse through a maze. The students would guide the mouse from underneath a board through the maze. Students also were given the challenge to make their car go up a ramp by using magnets that were repelling away from one another. Then when students were if they could make a lily pad sink or float they used small frogs to see how many frogs would cause the lily pad to sink. They also had a challenge to see how many objects two toy boats would hold without sinking. In their final station, students explored motion by using a catapult to see how far they could make plastic bugs fly through the air. Students would place the target at different points to see how much pressure was needed to move the objects. Then students used a ball, some wooden blocks, and a background to see how they could use the blocks to help them guide the ball into the hole. Students used the blocks to help create a path so they could roll, blow, or send their ball into the hole.
