Dianne's Web

Today we have a guest blogger, Joe Haverland, Senior Sales Manager for Kendall Hunt Publishing's Religious Education Division. Joe participated in National Lab Day activities at a couple local parochial schools and is anxious to tell you about it! Take it away, Joe!

Our efforts to volunteer this year in National Lab Day have been received with resounding enthusiasm. We kicked off NLD by visiting schools around the Dubuque area and several schools across the nation. (See guest blogger Charley Cook’s post).   We continued the momentum of by visiting Aquin Elementary Catholic School and St Columbkille’s Catholic School. Wayne Schnier, Jane Nielson, Don Burks, and I visited Aquin and conducted fun hands-on and inquiry based science experiments with the students. The students and teachers all had a blast as we did experiments with Gloop, Musical Pipes and Balancing Nails. 

The students enjoyed the experience and learned some important science about the properties of materials (Gloop), frequency, kinetic and sound energy (Musical Pipes) and Center of Balance and Equilibrium (Balancing Nails) I think it really opens the possibilities for children when they see how much fun learning science can be. We came in and made this event as open ended as we could and had an outstanding guided learning experience prepared for each grade level we worked with.

At St. Columbkille’s we replicated the experiments done at Aquin Elementary, with more volunteers. Pam Roth and Don Burks (Gloop) worked with the K and 1^st grade classes. Joe Haverland and Scott Wagner (Musical Pipes) worked with the 2^nd and 3^rd grade classes and Charley Cook and Chad Chandlee (Balancing Nails) worked with the 4^th and 5^th grade classes. Mrs. Barb Roling, Principal St. Columbkille’s was thrilled with our participation in NLD and invited us back anytime we could make time available.

Overall, our volunteering efforts for NLD were a resounding success. It was rewarding for the students and volunteers alike. We will absolutely do this again next year and I am sure all of our partner schools will definitely invite us back. An experience like this shows you the value science programs like Kendall Hunt’s when it comes to learning and having a lasting effect on content retention. Thanks to all of our partner schools and our volunteers. Without our willing school partners and volunteers we couldn’t have pulled this off as successfully as we did!