Location: McCormick Elementary School
Date: Saturday, March 28, 2015; 10:00 am-12:30 pm
I took an Uber to the school and arrived well ahead of
time. There was no sign of Maureen yet,
but the other volunteers were already there.
So I got a few of them to help me pull down the tables and arrange the
room, just as Maureen arrived. Today’s
theme was “Air Pressure” and besides
some demonstrations, the main hands-on activity was making “Balloon Car Racers”.
Maureen needed some folks to help with the prep work, especially cutting
cardboard boxes into car’s chassis. I
wanted to spend time with the kids and so did not volunteer to either
help with the prep work or in leading a demo.
We learnt that one of the volunteers had a ‘PhD’ in Physics and Maureen said that he should probably do
everything!
The kids arrived and I saw Nima and went over to chat with
her. I asked about the new things that she had learnt over the last couple of weeks, and she said something about doing a ‘Social Studies’ lesson where they
studied “Cause and Effect”. Wow! That
sounded way more advanced than anything that I had studied in the 4th
grade. I asked her about that and she
said that everything that happens has some effect on someone else. Boy, she is smart. Math worksheets were distributed and as usual
Nima was quick to solve everything. I
looked over her answers and while there was an error or two, she was quick to
understand when I pointed it out. I also
looked over worksheet of another girl next to me and she too had most of it
done right. She had some interesting
colored stones with her on the table and I wanted to ask her about them, but
didn’t get a chance.
Maureen asked everyone to pause since it was time for
volunteer introductions and this time we had to introduce ourselves by saying
what we did. We got all sorts of responses
ranging from Pharmaceutical research to music therapy for kids, to after school
children’s program to even a pizza shop – which got the kids excited. When it came time for the Physicist, Maureen
said that we had an expert amongst us and then he led the kids on journey
discussing ‘quantum physics’, ‘relativity’ and early universe -
basically everything that a 4th grader finds fascinating, but
understands nothing. I said that instead
of any demo’s we should let this guy talk!
While everyone introduced themselves, Maureen overlooked me, which was perfectly
fine since I wouldn’t have been able to beat the pizza guy anyways!
After the introductions Maureen asked the kids what the main
rules were and they responded by saying things like “listen”, “raise hands to ask
questions” and then one said “no
stealing”, which cracked everyone up!
Maureen started the lesson by discussing air pressure, particularly how
air is a gas. She then talked about
planes flying – thankfully skipping the ‘Bernoulli’s
Principle’ part. She had some toy
planes which some volunteers flew to demonstrate gliding. Next was a demo where Maureen put some paper on the open mouth of a plastic bottle and tried to push it inside by
blowing on it. The idea was to
demonstrate that the paper will not go inside due to the air pressure in the
bottle. She invited several kids to do
it and they were unsuccessful as well. Then Maureen put a boiled egg on top of the bottle and obviously it would not go in. She then
lit a paper on fire inside the bottle and it created some sort of vacuum,
drawing the egg inside it. It was an
excellent demo and the kids loved it. Next
activity was sticking cups to an expanding balloon – another experiment that we
have done before. Final demo was similar
to the one we had done at ‘Adler’, a
balloon rocket on a string. The kids
were excited about this one and this would now be our primer for the main
activity of building a balloon powered car.
While the kids took a break, Maureen said that we were to
pair with two kids and build the cars.
Before they came back, I chatted with the volunteer who works in kid’s
music therapy and discussed one of my favorite topics - music therapy for
seniors in Nursing homes. I asked
Nima if she wanted to build the car with me and she nodded with a smile. I also recruited another girl Ayesha for
this activity and we retired to the back of the room. I asked the girls to look over the
instructions while I went to get the supplies - cardboard pieces, barbecue skewers,
straws, tape, scissors and of course the balloon.
 |
| "Mr. Balloon" |
I am never good at this and both girls were looking up to me
for making the entire thing! I used the
mouth of plastic bottle to draw circles on cardboard and cut into wheels –
which would have made ‘Fred Flintstone’
proud, since they weren’t exactly circular.
We had to then pierce them with skewers and I used a punch, which made
huge holes, meaning that the wheels would not fit on the skewers. So we had to make 4 more wheels and this time
Ayesha helped me. I got the skewers
on the car with the straw as wheel axel and then used skewers to make holes on
the wheels. It wasn’t the easiest thing
to do, but at least the wheels were sticking well – though still not rotating
as smoothly as we would like. We then
taped the balloon to a straw and mounted to the top of the car. I blew into the balloon and we put the car
down, but it would not move, all because of the jagged wheels. I told the girls that if we got the wheels
right, then our car would be fine. Since
that wasn’t going so well, I asked them if they wanted to draw on the car and they
said yes. So I asked them to get some
markers and they started decorating, starting with the damned wheels. Nima drew some balloons on the car and I
said that we should call it “Mr. Balloon”. They both agreed and so I wrote it down, and
then drew some eyes and a mouth. I said
that we may not have a car that moves, but it certainly was the coolest.
Maureen then organized a race and there were all sorts of
cars going in all sorts of directions. Some didn’t move, like us, while some went
far and some sideways. There were even
cars with innovative designs like multiple balloons, to give them additional
thrust. In the end Maureen handed some
prizes – the toy planes from earlier, and then the kids left. I asked Nima to take the car with her and
she did. Maureen did a reflection and
there was some good feedback on how the kids were quite sharp. I left after an interesting session, where we
may not have been totally successful with our project, but still had lots of fun.
*All the client's names have been changed in order to respect their privacy
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