Feb 26th & 27th ~ Mesa County Safety Fair

This past week I teamed up with Mesa County 4-H Agent Melissa Wonnenberg to bring the CSU STEM Mobile Energy Trailer to the Mesa County Safety Fair. Grand Valley Power electrical coop sponsored our attendance at this awesome event where over 2,000 mesa county elementary school children were able to come and learn about safety and energy!





The kids were introduced to may types of energy production including crank, click circuits, fruit powered, and wind energy. 









Thanks to our Partners Grand Valley Power for sponsoring our trailer at the fair! Melissa Models!






The kids really enjoyed tinkering with the clip circuits and following new pathways and connections to try to make things move or light up! Sometimes their paths didn't work, but with a few helpful hints, they were able to make things happen.


The trailer itself is equipped to be totally run on power generated from solar cells OR wind power, but since we were inside the mall, those sources were not available to demonstrate. However, we were able to bring out a box fan and small scale wind turbine to demonstrate the power generation through wind! We hooked the turbine up to both an LED light and a meter so kids could see it at work and see the power generation in units! Kids were amazed!

Overall the Safety Fair was a great experience for us and a good way to expose the Energy Trailer, which was created through money sponsored by Grand Valley Power and 20+ other Colorado Electrical Coops around the state.

We look forward to more opportunities to bring this trailer and all it has to offer to our surrounding communities. 

I am a STEM/k12 Educator with Colorado State University Extension. I love working with youth and encouraging them to participate in many forms of hand on education! Overall, our goal is to promote positive youth development and encourage youth to pursue higher education after high school.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jan 21st ~ Measuring at the Meniscus!

Image
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 (
Read more

Dec 10th ~ Why Home Economics?

Image
 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
Read more

Sept 12th ~ Getting Back in the Groove of STEM

Image
  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
Read more