Students at Woodward Elementary School in Delaware will be participating in the COSI Science Festival this month after COSI dropped off 500 science kits for students this week.
The kits were dropped off Tuesday by staff and volunteers from COSI and CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society. Principal Eric Barr said every student in the school will get one to take home or use in a classroom setting.
Assistant Superintendent Craig Heath said the project has been in the works for a few years after he saw a series of science events COSI hosted at Dublin City Schools.
“COSI started a series of community-based science festivals a couple of years ago,” Heath said in an email Wednesday. “The series of events brought together people, businesses, industries, and schools from around the community to highlight some of the science and technology projects being implemented in Dublin.”
Heath said COSI was in the process of bringing the Science Festival to Delaware last spring, but the plans were halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As we begin the recovery process from the pandemic, COSI is bringing back a small handful of the Science Festival components this spring with the hopes of having the full festival series up and running again in 2022,” Heath said. “One of the components of the plan is the COSI on Wheels experiences and the Learning Lunchboxes being provided to our students at Woodward. These activities are those that we hope to use to inspire students to think scientifically and to engage in technology in more academic ways. We are grateful for the partnership with COSI and the City of Delaware, and we look forward to being able to showcase the talents our students and staff have in the future Science Festival series.”
Barr said the kits contain several science experiments for students, including building a rocket, creating moon craters in flour, and building a parachute for a rocket. Students are also given an interactive activity book and can use the internet to get more background information about the experiments, astronauts and NASA.
“It’s really, really cool,” Barr said. “Each child in our schools gets a box and have an opportunity to explore further about space and building rockets. There’s a lot of really cool stuff in here. (The program) highlights the amazing contributions that astronauts of diverse backgrounds have brought to the STEM programs at NASA.”
Barr said he hopes the projects encourage students to explore and learn more about science.
“I hope they have fun learning about space,” he said. “I hope they have an opportunity to work on some of these experiments with their families and parents, and gain a little additional knowledge about the space program and what STEM is. I’m really grateful that COSI and CAS came up with this program and partnered with us to give our students the opportunity to participate.”
