Canyon View third-grader Cora Jones used plastic sticks and toothpicks held together by marshmallows to build a tower.

“We tried to build the tallest one,” she said. 

Her classmate, Burke Neese, said he put ingredients, including vanilla, sugar, half and half and salt in a baggie, then teamed up with a buddy to throw it back and forth. 

“We shook it too; it made really good ice cream, although it was a bit salty,” he said.

Another student, Caleb Sawyer, said his bag popped.

“We ate it anyway; it was good,” he said.

These and many other activities were part of Canyon View Elementary’s science day. 

Breaking away from their traditional night, the event was moved to a school day afternoon so every student had the opportunity to attend, said Principal Kierstin Draper. 

“In the past, we’ve done science night, but when you do science night, some kids can’t make it and they don’t get to have that experience because maybe the parents work or can’t get them here,” she said. “This year, the PTA decided to do it during the school day and parents still could come volunteer.”

Volunteers oversaw activities targeted for each grade. Many of the activities were created by Canyons School District with supplies put together in a kit available for checkout.

The activities ranged from creating marble run sets with pool noodles to creating circuits. Some took magnifying glasses to identify insects as they played insect bingo. They also learned about the habitat of earthworms before creating their own worm in dirt using a gummy worm and grounded up Oreos.

“The activities were developmentally appropriate for the age. So, with the marble run, they’d work together as teams to figure out the dynamics and they had competing marble runs to see which ones could go fast and how it was impacted with different sizes of loops. Or they may learn the cycles of the moon, making those out of Oreos. Some learned how to do coding and program a robot and then, test their code,” Draper said. “It was just fun activities to get kids excited about learning science.”

In fact, when students turned in a paper explaining three things they learned on science day, they received Smarties candy.

“They were so proud about what they tried and learned,” she said. “I love seeing the kids excited and engaged in discovering and working together to solve problems. It helps them learn these life skills and watching them put their knowledge into practice. They’re understanding that learning is fun.”

Third-grader Frankie Cottrell liked investigating cereal with magnets.

“We learned by pouring water on the cereal, black dots would appear, and meaning there was iron in it,” she said. “We tested it with the magnets.”

Annica Draper, another third-grade student, said that she knows “our body needs iron, but it was fun smashing the Fruity Pebbles to find the iron in it. I usually don’t eat that kind of cereal.”

Fourth-grader Zachary Ence’s favorite rotation was making snap circuits. 

“The coolest part of the challenge was to make this motor spin; to do that, we had to figure out how to make a positive rotation all the way through,” he said. 

Zachary also learned about engineering by building a structure and programming when he coded a robotic mouse.

“I like problem-solving like that; we don’t normally get to do that in class,” he said. “This was hands-on and figuring out how to fix the problems ourselves. I liked the challenge.”

In addition to science day, Canyon View holds opportunities for students with a makerspace every Thursday morning before school and a STEAM Squad every Friday morning. λ