Hundreds of elementary students converged at the Yavapai College Verde Valley campus Friday, May 11, for XplorOlogy: Discover STEAM in the Verde Valley.
The day-long exhibition brought students from the Verde Valley and Sedona together to meet professionals with careers in science, technology, engineering, art and math. Part of the Arizona SciTech Festival, a statewide celebration of STEAM, the exhibition aimed to catch kids’ interest in STEAM found in the world around them.
Organizations that use science, technology, engineering, art and math set up booths to introduce students to their work and show kids what opportunities are available to them.
One such booth was the U.S. Forest Service, which had a few offerings, including animal pelts, paw print castings and replica skulls for kids to identify and learn about animals. Fletcher also brought a stack of postcards introducing the breadth of career paths found with the Forest Service, like biology, geology and engineering.
“We’re trying to reconnect kids with nature,” said Noel Fletcher, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service. “I’m over the moon to have been part of this.”
Other exhibitors included Yavapai College departments such as the wine center and ceramics; county departments like Public Works and the police; Verde Valley libraries; and nonprofits like Friends of the Verde River. Public Works, seated in the shadow of a tractor, shared the process of road building.
While many of the visiting students asked if they could ride the tractor, unfortunately they could not. Joe Huot, a special projects manager with
Public Works, said one astute fourth-grader asked about road interconnectivity, or how city and county departments work together to build roads to connect communities.
At the Friends of the Verde River booth, tubs full of water and soil pulled directly from the river gave a small sample of the life that teems in the river. One volunteer pulled water beetles and dragonfly larvae into magnifying bug viewers for kids to observe.
“We like to say, ‘Trout grow on trees,’” he said, explaining the cycle in brief: Bugs live on trees overhanging the river; leaves laden with bugs fall into the river; trout eat the bugs that fell in the water.
The other half of the booth was occupied by a station to build seed balls, lumps of clay, soil, water and seeds that help keep the seeds together and retain moisture, since seeds just left in the soil here are at risk of being blown away by the wind.
Hands-on activities like the Friends of the Verde Rivers’, as well as others, served to spark kids’ interest in learning outside the classroom.
Rebekah Wahlberg can be reached at 282-7795 ext. 117, or email rwahlberg@larsonnewspapers.com
