MVES hosts The Works to teach students science

• Photo: The Works

Meadowview Elementary School student Elise Lissick learned how to make a Silly Putty-type substance during a science night hosted by The Works Museum of Science last Thursday.

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• Gallery: The Works at Meadowview Elementary School

Parents help their kids with homework all the time. Last week, Meadowview Elementary School parents got to learn a little with their kids, too.

About 340 students and parents learned all kinds of fun little science facts Thursday evening when Meadoview’s Parent Teacher Partnership hosted The Works, a science education program out of Bloomington.

The Works features a number of engineering-style projects that are hands on for students. The kids got to learn how to make kaleidoscopes and Silly Putty-like putty. They learned how electronics work, they did a little circuit testing. At one station, they built a mini-castle, at another station they built boats from paper, aluminum foil and plastic cups. There were a number of stations set up around the school, and for two hours, families could move from station to station and participate in whatever they wanted to learn.

MVES Parent Teacher Partnership vice president Darci Lukkari said the evening was designed as an opportunity for students and parents to work together, and that goal was easily achieved.

“As the PTP, we like to have parents come in and be involved with the things their students are learning,” Lukkari said. “This was one of those instances where we were kind of promoting how family time ties into learning.”

The Works has a location in Bloomington, Lukkari said, and Meadowview fourth graders will get another chance to work on some of those science lessons when they go to The Works in a couple weeks. Last week’s evening, though , gave more students the chance to learn from the program.

Lukkari said the PTP relied heavily on volunteers – about 30 to 35 staff and teachers as well as a couple high school students helped out – to make the evening run smoothly. The volunteers were served a meal beforehand, then went through a quick tutorial before the evening’s classes started. If it had not been for those extra folks, Lukkari said the project wouldn’t have gone off as well as it did.

And it did go off well, she added. In talking with the volunteers during the evening, every one of them said they were having a good time.

“We got really wonderful feedback not only from the people who attended but the teachers and staff who worked it, too,” Lukkari said. “It really was a fun event.”

Tags: district 192, elementary schools, education