Smith students in the Jandon Center for Community Engagement’s Robotics Outreach Initiative lead Southampton Road Elementary students through a diner dash with their robots.
Reminder Publishing photo by Amy Porter
WESTFIELD — Southampton Road Elementary School held its second STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and math) night for third and fourth graders and their siblings, in partnership with students and staff from the Jandon Center for Community Engagement at Smith College.
SRS STEAM teacher Jessica Hanson said the school has been partnering for the last two years with the Jandon Center’s education initiative, which they connected with through a parent, Nancy Ziegler, who works there. Besides the STEAM night, they’ve benefitted from the Center’s Robotics Outreach Initiative, which organizes teams of Smith students to create robotics workshops and classes.
The Robotics Outreach team ran an eight-week robotics club for fourth graders at SRS over the past two falls. Hanson said the club was so popular, she had to hold a lottery to select up to a dozen students to participate this year. The first year, the robotics club, using Lego Mind Storm robots, ran them through a craze maze. This past fall, club participants coded the robots to bowl a ball.
The Robotics team brought their robots to STEAM night, giving all of the students who attended the opportunity to participate in a diner dash, in which the robots pushed “food” items from one restaurant to another.
Seamus Golen, 9, who attended STEAM night with his nana, Polly Carlen, said he had taken part in the robotics club. “It was really fun, we got to play and code with the robots. There were lots of fun activities,” he said.
Asli Ali coordinates the Robotics Outreach. She said in the program, logistics and curriculum are student-led and open to Smith students in all disciplines. The team at SRS on Feb. 10 said they were studying engineering, public health and education.
In addition to K-12 schools, the Jandon Center’s community partners have included the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Holyoke, the Connecticut Science Center, the People’s Science Fair and the Girl Scouts.
The Jandon Center also brought telescopes and samples from nature, which students viewed at 10- and 20-times magnification while staffer Hannah Gates talked about what they were observing.
Parent Eric Babci, who works for Cartamundi in East Longmeadow, brought the ingredients they use to make Hasbro’s Play-Doh, including flour, salt, water, fragrance and pigments. He talked about the science behind the toy, bringing a video showing how it is made. Babci said they bring leftover Play-Doh bits to area farms for the animals to eat.
Another parent taught the students how to stitch fabric on large samples, which Hanson called a lost art. On Hanson’s table, she brought her robots and a Makey Makey activity, in which students could plug into a banana and play piano on a computer.
Kindergartener Logan Paulson was using magnetic tiles to build marble runs with his father Charles Paulson. “Logan likes to build things. His older brother is really into it,” Paulson said.
Other SRS student participants were playing with a giant Connect 4 game and drawing pictures, among many other activities.
SRS Principal Kate Ritchie and Hanson expressed their appreciation for the Jandon Center. “They’re such great role models for young girls,” Hanson said, adding that SRS is lucky to have built the partnership with them.
