STEM(in) with Steph is a fun way to keep up with me ~ The STEM/k12 Agent for Colorado State University Extension in the Tri River Area of Western Colorado! Read on for fun STEM activities and community projects! I share updates on programs I'm involved in or cool science you can practice at home!
Sept 16-17 ~ EUREKA KIDS CAMP in Grand Junction
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Cooking Up Nutrition!
Spinach Pops, with kale, chia seeds, OJ, yogurt, peaches, and bananas! Yum!
This last week I was invited to help conduct a nutrition camp at the newly constructed CSU Orchard Mesa Research Center in Grand Junction. In partnership with Amanda McQuade at Community Alliance for Education and Hunger Relief and CSU Extension Family and Consumer Science Agent Ann Duncan, we hosted 25 3rd-6th graders for a 2 day healthy eating and cooking camp!
Picking peppers for the food bank
While there, we picked our own produce from the garden and prepared yummy snacks like baked apples and spinach smoothies, granola energy bites, and even made our own veggie stir fry, testing out 5 different sauces on our mix.
I was even able to present a STEM lesson on the Sugar Content of various common name products. Kids measured out how may cups of sugar they thought was contained in each product, and then were amazed and astounded by the actual amounts of sugar in each product. We discussed the difference between natural and added sugars and learned what the recommendations for each kids sugar intake are!
Overall camp was a lot of fun! So many new recipes to try!
The New Year is here and Problem Based Learning projects (PBL's) are once again shaping up for schools in our community. This time around, we are back with Oak Grove Elementary School to work with 4th graders. I won't give away their PBL question, but they are learning how a rain gauge works and will be collecting precipitation rates all semester with the CoCoRaHS Rain Gauge donated to their school. Our (Dr. Barbara Shaw and myself) first visit was to both introduce the PBL question and to teach kids how to measure liquids in graduated cylinders, beakers, and the rain gauge. The first step when measuring water is knowing that water has adhesive properties, meaning it likes to cling to surfaces. This can be seen when you pour water into a glass container and then meet the surface at eye level. What do you see? Probably something similar to the example below. Example of water in a glass measuring container. Where do you measure when it is a curve? Water will curve (
Soap Box Time! One of the things I think that we've lost in public education is the Home Economics training that so many young people need to function properly as adults. When I was in school, we were taught how to cook and clean, how to mend things rather than toss them away, and how to balance a check book. Today in our 'test score %' society, it's hard to find that old fashion education in any of the curriculum books. And I find that really disturbing since it's many of these basic skills that we depend upon daily to function. However, thankfully I'm not the only one this concerns. Many educators still offer such classes and learning opportunities for youth to gain these skills. One such group is located in Delta, Colorado. Two Tuesday afternoons a month, a group of middle and high school girls get together with their 3 head instructors for what they call Life Skills training. From the creation of their squad, they have covered a plethora o
Welcome back to school! Yes, some of you have been at your desks since August already, but time flies as you get older (Trust me....). It's exciting to see that STEM is taking a front row seat in our districts' this year as each school has brought on a STEM coordinator to bring the joy of hands on education through Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics! I'm going to be brief today but want to share just a couple of fun resources available through our STEM Programming this year! Three (3) In-Classroom/Home Chicken Incubators available for loan out to study life cycles/sciences. These kits include all the materials needed to go from a fertilized egg to the live chicks and engages students in discussions about the industry, parts of the egg and cycles, creating a farm, and even life and death conversations and dissection's. 25+ STEM Kits for Check-out through our kit loan program. Like a backpack program, STEM kits can be checked out from any of our th
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