YORK COUNTY, Pa. — Six thousand elementary school students catapulted into STEAM on May 2 with a friendly competition to build the craftiest catapult.
Students from first through third grades spent the day designing and building their catapults using just straws, plastic spoons, popsicle sticks and rubber bands.
At Wallace Elementary in West York Area School District, ping pong balls flew in arcs across the classroom as first graders tested their catapults’ strength.
“Kids are more creative, they’re excited, they’re running to school knowing that they get to participate in activities like this,” said the district’s Technology Integrator Donna Meeks.
After their experiment, third graders at Hayshire Elementary in Central York School District video called another class at Schaeffer Elementary in Manheim Township School District. Students shared their hardest and most successful moments building the catapults.
Educators said collaboration with other students and schools was a key element of the event.
“Getting to connect and see that other classes have maybe the same ideas, the same struggles. Just getting to know different classes and seeing that we’re all kind of doing the same thing is a good experience for them,” said Hayshire third-grade teacher Missy Rhodes.
For one third grader, Ian Montalvo-Garcia, the experience of building his own design helped convince him to go into a STEM field when he grows up.
“I have a few things on my list but I haven’t really decided. I kind of want to become a mechanic when I grow up,” he said.
The event, part of the Remake Learning Days festival, launched in 2016 from Pittsburgh. This year it reached 175,000 families across the U.S. and the world, with participants in Uruguay, New Zealand and the U.K.