Better Than Saturday Morning Cartoons––

Child’s Play –– Discoveries In Science Are Never Dull

By Dottie Evans

The 11th Annual Discovery Science, Math, and Technology workshops sponsored by the Newtown Junior Women’s Club and the Board of Education took place Saturday morning, March 22, at Newtown High School and organizers, sponsors, presenters, and parents called it a grand success.

Beyond that, it was obvious the children were having a ball.

Boys and girls from kindergarten through fifth grade along with their parents, attended the workshops of their choice “taught” by community volunteers who had stepped forward to share their particular areas of expertise. 

Event sponsors were Newtown Savings Bank, Taunton Press, Bob Tendler Realty, Curtiss & Crandon, Berkshire Motors, Newtown Animal Hospital, O’Neill Family, RS Technologies, Union Savings, Dr Gellert, DDS, and Dr Isgut, MD.

The three-hour program included 35 hands-on workshops on every imaginable topic from architecture to magic, volcanoes to shipbuilding, sound waves to cryptography.

The only problem facing children was narrowing the choices down to a manageable two 45-minute sessions.

“This is the seventh year I’ve done this and it’s never the same. I really enjoy it,” said Bob Mitchell of Mitchell Architectural Group in Newtown.

The topic of his workshop was “Architecture: A Bridge Between Art and Science for Grades 3–5.”

One glance into Mr Mitchell’s third-floor classroom was enough to realize why he kept coming back. The room was filled with youngsters working feverishly at their projects. Some talked among themselves and others concentrated hard in solitary thought.

One task Mr Mitchell had posed was the construction of a skyscraper that was sturdy enough to stand on its own and touch the ceiling. The materials were a uniform set of plastic sticks and joints not unlike the Tinker Toys the children’s parents and grandparents might have recalled.

The problem was, once the tower got to about five feet, most of the children were too short to work on the high end. So they needed to make two towers and then join them at the last minute.

But Mr Mitchell carefully withheld any advice, letting them solve such problems on their own.

 “It’s all about teamwork,” he observed. “They’ll manage it. They always do.”

The two structure teams did reach the ceiling at about the same time and although it was not supposed to be a race, it had all the appearance of one.

Other “architecture students” worked by themselves putting together triangular structures with straws and Play-Doh joints.

Two girls sat together at a far table, their architectural pads spread out and colored pencils in hand, designing tree houses with media rooms and Jacuzzis. One design featured a slide into the nearby swimming pool.

“That’s so cool,” Mr Mitchell said.

“You can see how involved the kids are. Really, the parents could just go out for a cup of coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts,” he added.

Mathematical Origami

A second floor classroom featured teams of children with a parent or two sitting at tables, carefully folding brilliantly colored squares of paper. This was mathematical origami and the leader, Carol Haimes, was showing the children how to construct boxes out of folded pieces of Japanese paper.

“Notice all the shapes you are making while you do the folds,” Ms Haimes said, demonstrating in front of the group.

The children easily identified triangles, squares and parallelograms, but putting the entire box together at the end took a fair bit of concentration and steady hands.

“You’ve got to slip that edge into the pocket,” she said, “and do it all the way round.”

“Then tuck the all pockets in and you have your box.”

One girl thought this was not unlike the game she and her friends often played with their fingers, opening and closing a single sheet of notebook paper that had been folded into interlocking triangles –– where each opening revealed a different choice in whatever field they chose.

Who will you marry? What team will win the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament? What will you be when you grow up? The choices are endless.