I heart science

So this post is going to have really bad pictures, despite the fact that we had a super duper fun evening. The lighting was terrible and there were 84,523,780 bajillion people so you just have to trust me that it was awesome. UO hosted a science open house night for elementary school kids. In all my nerdy glory, I had to be sure we went. I literally begged Squirt for two days to be crazy good and do all her chores so we could go because I did not want to miss it.

One year at the USTA conference, a "statistic" or poll response was presented that stated a fairly high number of people who become science teachers do so because they want to blow stuff up. There's probably some truth to that. We are a weird bunch and we just love to play!

The open house looked strangely like a craft fair, boy scout expo, or weird summer camp. Tables surrounded the main hall with a different discipline represented at each table. Kids could build marshmallow shooters with PVC pipe (all gone before we got there - sadly), build molecules out of gumdrops and toothpicks, play with Oobleck, and other such stuff. Seriously, science is a blast!

Our first stop was physics - or dropping an egg off a balcony. There were tables of random supplies and kids could build a structure to try and keep an egg from breaking when dropped from the third story balcony. Squirt did it! A foam cup, some cotton balls, pink duct tape (of course), and a weird cardboard parachute type deflector seem to have been effective.

Jim was helping Aeryn to unwrap her egg. You can see the pink duct tape and cotton behind the Buglet's hands. We felt optimistic despite her unusual design because most of the time you could hear the eggs shattering and we didn't have any of that!

She was sooooo happy to have not broken the egg! I'm not sure you can tell that from the picture :)

She got to explore Archaeology by trying to put together pieces of broken pots and then constructing her own pot out of clay. Then it was playing with lasers and mirrors to explore angles of reflection. Finally, it was genetic coding where she picked two parent monsters and used their traits to complete Punnett squares and determine what kind of monster child they would have. I think making the monster was her favorite.

She gave her monster feathers for legs. This guy should have no trouble flying with those and it's bat wings!

Living in a University town is a blast. I can hardly wait until they do this again next year!