Family Science Night

Two weeks ago I took part in the Family Science night at our school. I was fortunate enough to teach a 30 minute segment as a part of the science night experience. Students, parents and guardians from each grade 5th, 6th, 7th & 8th showed up to participate in some exciting science activities. The event started with opening activities where students played with tuning forks, created their own bottle of ethanol and did other crazy things that involved blowing up pop bottles! After the opening activities students, parents and guardians were split up to go to my activity (balloon rockets) or the other interns (bridge buidling) activity. Both the other intern and I planned 30 minute activities for our respective groups. After 30 minutes, the groups would switch and we would go through our lesson again. My activity involved students making balloon rockets. Students and parents were to use two chairs, string, straw and a balloon to construct a rocket that would travel on the string. The point of the activity was to measure the speed of the rocket. Students and parents had a blast and so did I. One thing that was really tough during my activities was controlling everyone. Having balloons, string and the "word" rocket in your lesson and you are bound for some hyper children and some parents! If you think teaching 27 students is tough, try 80 and be thankful you only have 27. I thought crowd control would be easy since parents would be there, sorry to say, it wasn't. I learned my lesson, but I had a great time and I hope I have some kind of family event liek this in my future school!