Date: Fri 22-May-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: MICHEL

Quick Words:

hawley-family-science-night

Full Text:

Family Science Night At Hawley School

(with cuts)

BY MICHELE HOGAN

Third graders at Hawley School know what happens when you pile pennies on a

little aluminum foil boat. It sinks.

But how many pennies can you pile on your boat before it sinks?

Students and parents experimented with the activity at the Family Science

Night on Wednesday, May 13.

Some thought that if the boat was made wider, the pennies could be spread out.

At first it seemed to be working, then a few pennies later, the sides crumpled

in and it sank.

Maybe you could make the sides thicker, but then you would use up more foil,

and your boat would be small. It would lack surface area. When tried, it sank

with only a few pennies.

What about if you made a round boat, or a super long and skinny one?

Intriguing questions led to wet little fingers and more questions, as third

graders and their parents molded little boats, piled on pennies, and tried to

figure out what would lead to success.

This was all part of a program developed by math/science specialist Debbie

Cowden and third-grade teacher Lil Martenson, both of Hawley School, to

involve parents in the kind of scientific thinking that their children are

learning.

Over the year, children showed parents the skills they had gained with the

scientific process: measuring, hypothesizing, communicating, observing,

predicting, and inferring at a series of stations setup throughout the

auditorium.

In one station, students played with pendulums. They measured the pendulum

swing with various lengths of string in order to understand how they could

control relevant variables.

Fourteen fifth graders manned the science stations that were visited by about

150 people that evening.

Mrs Cowden said it was "thrilling to see parents working through these science

activities with their kids, and the fifth graders did a great job."

Mrs Cowden is reviewing the most popular science activities -- the pennies in

the boats, the complex classification of small things, and the pendulums -- to

come up with more great activities for next year's family science night.