Libraries and schools around the Verde Valley show kids how learning can be fun through a festival of special events and activities this month and beyond.
The Verde Valley SciTech Festival is an extension of the Arizona SciTech Festival, a statewide celebration of science, technology, engineering, art and math.
Each year, organizations around the Verde Valley choose a month to host events highlighting STEAM activities, showing students how the science, technology, engineering, art and math they learn in school integrate into real-world experiences.
This year, the Verde Valley SciTech Festival was Feb. 18 through March 18.
“The goal is to make families and the community aware of science and technology and what it involves and what kids can learn from being involved,” said Joyce Read, youth services coordinator at the Cottonwood Public Library and a member of the Verde Valley SciTech Festival committee.
Special events at libraries and schools give kids hands-on opportunities to learn through play. During the Cottonwood library’s special event on Feb. 21, the Wonder Factory from Flagstaff set up a wind tunnel and kids made parachutes and helicopters to fly through it.
In Camp Verde, a number of outdoor activities, including outdoor bird walks at Montezuma Well and star parties at Rezzonico Family Park and Tuzigoot National Monument, shared the science of nature.
“People think STEM is all about computers and technology, but it’s also about gardens, science and biology,” said Scott Keller, principal at West Sedona School, which is STEM-accredited.
West Sedona held events Feb. 22 and 23 in collaboration with the Arizona Science Center, which brought eight of its mobile exhibits to the school’s Makerspace. The school also hosted a scavenger hunt in its garden.
“It’s about getting kids into new opportunities to learn information and getting them in the real
world,” Keller said. “We want to create problem-solvers who invent and imagine a new future.”
Year-Round Learning
While the month of events brings STEAM front and center, organizers encourage STEAM activities year-round.
“We want people to know that it’s year-round, even though we highlight it in February and March,” Read said.
Many of the organizations involved in the festival, like local libraries and schools, hold weekly STEM or STEAM activities. The Camp Verde Community Library, for example, hosts STEAM Time every Saturday afternoon, using the SciShow Kids program on YouTube to walk kids through lessons about how snowflakes work, experiments using dyed water to change the color of plant leaves, and more.
At Cottonwood Public Library, STEAM kits are available for kids on Tuesday afternoons through its Full STEAM Ahead activity. The library’s STEAM kits take a number of forms: Anki Overdrive race tracks, circuit builders, miniature robot kits, a 3-D printer pen and spirographs, to name just a few.
“It’s discovering different ways to do things even though they’re not necessarily following the directions set before them,” Read said. “It’s play, but it’s also learning.”
In Sedona, preschoolers are invited to Sedona Public Library’s Fun with Math and Science program on Wednesday mornings, and West Sedona School allows students to use its Makerspace, which includes a LEGO wall, 3-D printers and LEGO robotics, for class projects or after-school activities.
All the World’s a Fair
The SciTech fun doesn’t stop at the library: A new event, XplorOlogy, will be held in the Yavapai College’s Verde Valley Campus library Friday, May 11.
It’s a behemoth collaboration among the college; the cities of Cottonwood and Sedona; the towns of Clarkdale and Camp Verde; Yavapai County; various city, town and county agencies; nonprofits and corporations through a grant from the Rural Innovation and Activation Network.
“It’s a great way to show partnerships and collaboration work between all these different entities,” said Debbie Breitkreutz, a regulatory compliance, safety and education administrator with the city of Cottonwood and one of the event’s organizers.
Xpolor-Ology will include booths and activities from a number of city, county and state organizations, including the Forest Service, Yavapai County Flood Control, the Cottonwood Police Department, SEC engineering, APS and the American Horticulture Society, as well as college departments and programs. The expo will be closed to the public during the day while fourth through sixth graders from schools across the Verde Valley get tours, and it will open to everyone in the afternoon.
A free concert Wednesday, May 9 in the Mabery Pavilion at the college will kick off the events.
“There is a science to pretty much everything that you do nowadays,” Breitkreutz said. “STEM is not only for kids — it’s for everybody.”
For more information about the Verde Valley SciTech Festival and Xplor-Ology, visit vvscitech.org.
Rebekah Wahlberg can be reached at 282-7795 ext. 117, or email rwahlberg@larsonnewspapers.com
