STEM Family Night

Tonight was STEM Family night at Root, and we all went to enjoy the festivities, a quick dinner, and Brian’s favorite, the Kona Ice snow cones.  There were a lot of activities, and the school was totally packed!  I mean, really, wall-to-wall kids and parents and volunteers–to the point that I started to wonder if there was a fire marshall on hand.  😉  The mass of humanity made it really hot inside, and the noise, oh…  the noise.  But!  It was great to see just how much Brian got into the robotics exhibits.  We learned that there’s a Triangle Robotics club for kids, we’ll have to check that out when Brian is a little older.  I didn’t think I’d be able to pry him away from their displays in the Music room–really, he stayed in there for the longest time!  He was so fascinated by the battle bots, the basketball-playing robot, and the Arduino-powered alligator-clip piano.  He also really liked the 3-D printer (who doesn’t!?)  We did manage to get him into the gym for a few of the hands-on activities–he enjoyed learning about friction with a volunteer from NC State, and another exhibit about pneumatics.  He was heartbroken when the event ended and he hadn’t gotten to finish building his catapult out of a spoon, popsicle sticks, and a rubber band.  A volunteer gave us a plastic baggie to put his supplies in, and we assured him, he could finish his catapult at home.  He was still pretty sad, though–he wanted to compete in the contest to see how far he could fling a cotton ball with his catapult.  I promised him that we could have our own contest at home, and that we could even mark our progress with tape on the floor, just like at school.  That made it better, and he was able to calm down (I guess the tape marks on the floor were really important to him!)  (Edited to add:  we really did do this the next day!  Brandon was speechless when he saw us flinging stuff, and our 20+ pieces of masking tape on the hardwood floor. 😉  Hey, we cleaned it up!!)