Third annual Family STEM Night

Tanner Holman, left, and Leroy Fast put together an electrical circuit at the Nevada Middle School Family STEM Night on Thursday.

Gabe Franklin

By Gabe Franklin

gfranklin.ndm@gmail.com

Nevada Middle School hosted their third annual Family STEM Night on Thursday drawing a crowd of hundreds of students and their families.

Elise Moreland takes aim with her popsicle stick catapult at Nevada Middle School’s Family STEM Night on Thursday.

Gabe Franklin

“It’s nice to see families coming in and working with their kids and having fun,” science teacher Angie Landoll said.

After being welcomed by principal Geoff Stewart, students and their families had the choice of 13 different stations they could participate in covering a variety of science, technology, engineering and mathematics subjects.

One of the more popular stations appeared to be the Dash Battlebots where participants taped wooden skewers and an inflated balloon to their remote-controlled robot and attempted to pop the other participant’s balloon first.

Pam Baldwin, left, watches as her grandson Kalan Mahana attaches a skewer to his robot to be used as a lance.

Gabe Franklin

Other stations allowed participants to make electrical circuits, build catapults, explore surface tension with engineers from 3M, build a boat, build a balloon-powered car or even make magnetic slime.

Eighth-grade accelerated science students took part in the presentations Thursday evening organizing and running six of the science and technology stations.

“Even our accelerated kids had to adapt on the fly last night,” Landoll said explaining that sometimes, the projects didn’t work exactly how they should have and the students had to solve the problem.

“It’s a big class, but that’s a group that knows how to get to work,” she said of her 27 accelerated science students. “Great feedback on how they did last night. I am really proud of them.”

Landoll explained that two years ago, the middle school’s traditional science fair was replaced by Science Night. Last year, Science Night become Family STEM Night when engineering, technology and math projects were added.

“We were completely overwhelmed, we had no idea that many would show up,” Landoll said of the first Science Night two years ago.

“The district has been really good to support this,” Landoll said, explaining that several of the administrators had attended and some had participated in the projects.

Additionally, community support has come from Nevada Rotary Club, Cottey College, Healthy Nevada, 3M and Missouri Department of Conservation.