Kids get day to
show off their smarts
Annual tradition highlights math,
science
Fourth-grader Steven Martineau wrapped his egg in cushiony pipe cleaners
before handing it over to an adult atop a work truck who dropped one girded egg
after another from about 15 feet above the asphalt parking lot.
Despite
Steven's efforts to protect the egg, it hit with a splat, oozing yolk through
shards of shell.
"I knew
it wasn't going to work," Steven, 10, said.
But, he
added, "It doesn't really matter. It's just fun."
Steven, a
student at Silver Lake Elementary School in Middletown, was taking part last
week in SMART Kids Day, an annual springtime tradition at the school that uses
every cranny of space inside and outside of the building for challenging science
and math activities. The SMART stands for Science and Math Activities Requiring
Thinking.
The
event, which is in its 15th year, is the brainchild of school math specialist
Laurie Wicks, who saw each year how the brightest children at schools got to be
part of big, sanctioned competitions. She believes all students have talents,
and she wanted to give each student at Silver Lake a chance to experience that
same thrill of victory.
The event
is a little bit like the Olympics, said school library specialist Jodie Klein,
who has helped organize it for the past couple of years. There is an opening
ceremony for the activities -- 39 of them this year -- and an awards ceremony is
held at the end of the day.
In one of
the activities, the children build catapults to see who can catapult
marshmallows the farthest. In another, the students make a small building out of
various materials to see whether it can withstand an "earthquake," produced by
yanking on a spring-loaded plywood foundation.
"We're
supposed to pretend we're architects," said Ronald Tuck, 11, a fifth-grader, who
was part of a team that built a structure out of straws, toothpicks, pipe
cleaners and other materials. It withstood the earthquake just fine.
Fellow
fifth-grader Tyler Powell, 12, built a vehicle out of different shapes of pasta,
to be rolled down a hilly plywood incline. Did he plan to put some tomato sauce
on it for dinner afterward?
"No,
there's glue," he said matter-of-factly.
The
school staff all wore black event T-shirts and the children wore various-colored
shirts according to grade. The Valero Energy Group donated $5,000 to pay for the
shirts and other materials.
Parents
also volunteer to help each year at the event, and there were 125 of them last
week, including William Wehmeyer, who started participating eight years ago when
his daughter -- now 15 -- was in the second grade. He has continued each year,
and he currently has another daughter who is a first-grader at the
school.
"It's
just good to see the kids learn and do different things," he said. "They have
such a good time with this. You can see the joy of learning on the kids' faces.
A light bulb pops on."
The
activities have remained about the same over the years, but they have been
refined through repetition.
"Teachers
are becoming pros; they're becoming the experts of their tasks," Klein said.
"It's just getting better and better each year."
The
children learn a lot during the day because hands-on activities make a big
impression on them, she said. They also must learn to work in teams, which is
another side benefit.
Wicks
said the event -- recognized in 1997 as a Superstars in Education winner by the
Delaware State Chamber of Commerce -- is tied in to state standards, as well as
the science kits that are made available to schools.
"It's so
much fun to see the kids learning so much without knowing how much they're
learning," Klein said.
Pictured above: Silver Lake Elementary School
pupils Christopher Medina-Mora (left) works with partner Gavin Milyo to balance
a ruler on a cylinder with small weights during an experiment for the Middletown
school's SMART Kids Day on Thursday. An opening ceremony kicked off the day with
39 mathematical and science challenges and wrapped up with an awards
ceremony.
Photograph by: The News Journal/ROBERT
CRAIG
