Young Scientists At McCormick

Location: McCormick Elementary School

Date: Saturday, January 26, 2013; 9:50 am-12:00 pm

On Friday evening our Volunteer Leader Maureen, sent an email asking if anyone needed a ride the next morning.  Considering it was a new location for me and I would probably be on the CTA for a long time, I said that if possible I would like to take her up on this offer.  She called to confirm the time and pick-up place and said that she could only take me there, and the return would be my responsibility.  I muttered something like “Perhaps Wilson will drop me”, and was not surprised to hear her say that Wilson would indeed be in attendance.  We seriously need to run a test to check if he has cloned himself to be able to do multiple projects at the same time!

Maureen picked me up the next morning and we chatted about many things on the way there, including the school, the project, her job, and the fact that her sister had delivered a baby a few days ago while stuck in traffic on the interstate!  People really have the most interesting stories, and it made my week seem mundane and boring.  We arrived to find that we were early and the school was still locked.  Maureen was carrying some supplies for our activities, including some sweet potatoes and lemons for a battery experiment.  While we waited, another volunteer Ron, joined us.  Soon thereafter Wilson arrived with a fellow volunteer, Vien.  There were some other projects that were being conducted by Chicago Cares that morning, one of them being Eco-Art from recycled materials.  The Volunteer Leader for that project was waiting outside with us and mentioned that they were going to be making photo frames.  This led to Wilson quizzing him on the specifics for the next 5 minutes.  If he could survive Wilson, kids would be a piece of cake. 

Probability with M&Ms:
Those blue ones are the best

Soon the doors opened and we went inside.  We had a big room available to us and started setting up the tables and looking through the supplies to find what we needed.  Soon the two other volunteers, Jesus and JJ arrived and our team was complete.  The first experiment that we were going to be doing that morning was one to teach the kids probability.  Maureen had bought packs of M&M, and the idea was to count exactly 100 in 4-5 cups, distribute them amongst various groups, and then have the kids count each color and measure the probability of finding M&M of a particular color.  Our first task was to measure 100 M&M’s, and trust me when I say so: it is very easy to get distracted and make mistakes. When the kids arrived, I was still double and triple counting to make sure I had counted correctly.

Maureen had disciplined the kids well enough that everyone took their spots on the benches.  It was still loud, but at least we had managed to sit them down without much difficulty.  Each volunteer was assigned a table and I got three boys, Edmond, Danny and Marcel  There was also a spunky girl called Andrea in my group.  The first thing Maureen did was taking a roll call and while she prepared for the experiments, handed all the kids a ‘Winter Worksheet’ activity.  The task was to spot 7 differences in two pictures puzzles and I challenged the boys to find them before me.  Little did I realize that the smartest person by far on our table was Andrea, and yes that includes me.  Not only did she finish before us, she was the only one to spot all seven.  She looked at me as if I was foolish to have doubted her and I knew then that I was going to grow extremely fond of this little girl. 

Since all of us had finished this activity in record time, Maureen gave us another one.  This was a picture of various people engaged in Winter activities and based on that picture, we had to answer about 20 questions.  The boys were doing quite well, but Andrea was way ahead and once again, finished first and also pointed out that there were five additional questions on the back side.  By this time she had warmed up to me and was consulting with me to make sure her answers were right.  I started talking with her and learned that she was nine years old, liked art and reading, had a younger sister and an even younger brother who was two; and a Pitbull dog called Blue, because of his blue fur.  The boys, who knew her very well, joined in by telling me that she loved scary movies and ghosts.  This fact was confirmed by Andrea and to prove that, she did a voice impression of the girl in ‘The Exorcist’, which would have scared the wits out of me if I wasn't prepared. 

Maureen then got us started on the M&M probability experiment and my biggest challenge was to prevent the boys from...well, eating their homework.  Apparently blue M&M’s are the most popular, and Marcel being the oldest and thus the leader, claimed them.  Everyone counted their respective colors and then we divided them by hundred to come-up with the percentages.  We also did basic fractions with them and I explained how they would be able to know the probability of picking a particular color from a bag in certain number of attempts.  All good advice, but they really wanted to eat the M&Ms.  Finally Maureen consented and before anyone could say ‘Probability’, all of them were gone! 

I noticed that Wilson was having trouble with the next experiment which was to use lemon and sweet potatoes to make a ‘Food Battery’.  Wilson was trying to light a small bulb but it did not work.  I said that a small LED, such as the one on Christmas lights, would help and he went to look for it in his car.  Now, Wilson’s car had enough stuff to fill a garage sale and so I was not surprised to see him come back with the said LED light.  Unfortunately that did not work as well and so we moved to the next experiment which was called ‘Balloon Power’.

We managed to get three cups on our balloon

The idea was for one person to blow a balloon and when it is half full, others would attach small cups to it.  Then the balloon would be filled with air and the suction due to expansion would cause the cups to stick to the surface.  The team having the maximum cups would win.  Danny was our balloon blower and the rest of us tried to stick the cups on.  After multiple attempts, lot of yelling and a lot of mess, we managed to stick around 3 cups.  This was the standard for other teams as well and the boys were happy to have finished on top.  During this activity I learned that Edmond was ten years old and loved soccer, Danny was eleven and likes football and Marcel was twelve and liked boxing and wrestling.  While the boys were busy, I asked Andrea who her friends were and she shrugged and pointed to the three of them.  The she looked at me and whispered, “But I don’t like them sometimes”.  Something told me that the four of them may fight like crazy, but were probably real good friends and each of those boys would protect Andrea if need be. 

After the balloon experiment the boys took a bathroom break.  Since they had not returned for some time, I went to check and found the three of them having used the hand soap to create foam and bubbles in the sink and were playing with it.  Ooh to be of that age!  We finally came in and Maureen finished our session with a Science Quiz.  I was pleased that all four of them got several answers right and saw that Andrea is really a smart girl.  Soon the time was up and the kids left in a single file.  Andrea waved to me and I knew I was going to miss her and the boys.  The volunteers debriefed with Maureen and then it was a question of checking if anyone could give me a ride to the train station.  JJ was going into the city and he gave me and Ron a lift.  I learned that JJ was in the same company where one of my old collaborators from a previous job worked.   It is indeed a small world.  He dropped me off in the West Loop and I took a cab into downtown.  Once again, it had been a fantastic Saturday and besides having met lovely kids, I had realized how much more fun Math would have been at my school if we had used M&M’s, and blue ones at that. 


*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy