Sudsy science
Texas students learn STEM skills with bubble experiments
First grader Ramsay Euton uses a traditional wand to make a bubble May 7 during the Bubble Project Student Showcase for parents at Bowie Elementary School in Abilene, Texas.
First grader Dolores Jackson balances on her hand one of the bubbles she made.
First graders Samuel Latham and Isabella Mankin try to make their best bubbles yet.
Young hands swish and dunk the bubble wands they made.
First grader Aeson Pedroza-Height reacts to a soap bubble stuck to his hand.
EDUCATION
Big things are bubbling at Bowie Elementary School in Abilene, Texas.
Bowie's kindergarten through second grade classes topped off a nine-week study unit with a soapy showcase held for parents May 7.
"Today we had our STEM Bubble Project Showcase. Each classroom completed a STEM unit on bubble wands," Principal Janaye Wideman said. Students' "task was to explore bubble wands, their design, their purpose, how they make bubbles, what the best design is for the different kinds of bubbles you can make."
STEM — the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — was tied into the project for a purpose.
"So our students have spent nine weeks studying this. They've done a lesson a week, and throughout their exploration they have learned about all different structures, types of bubbles, shapes of bubbles," Wideman said. "Each part of the process is just going through and thinking about, 'What am I trying to accomplish?'"
On the heels of such a question, the student then asks how they accomplish it. That's followed by making a plan, executing it and then improving on it.
Science for fun
Pretty heady stuff for a kindergartner or even a second-grader, but when a mind is focused, its abilities can be endless.
And you could see the joy in the students as the bubbles they created with their handmade wands took flight.
"So they had a lot of fun, they got to play with bubbles," Wideman said. "But the ultimate goal was to build knowledge in the engineering design process."
That's important because big changes are on the horizon for Bowie, as well as Purcell Elementary
School. In the fall, both will be designated STEM campuses at the elementary school level. On May 11, the Abilene ISD Board of Trustees voted unanimously to change the schools' names to Bowie STEM Academy and Purcell STEM Academy.
"We will have a lot more activities like this, more exposure to STEM fields for our students, and they'll have a lot more experiences tied to STEM," Wideman said. "We're really excited about that."
About the journey
If you're wondering about the real-world application in all of this, quite simply, it's not the product that matters so much as the process that it took to make it.
The focus on designing something in which the students are highly motivated to work properly ensures the lessons they learn getting to that point stick. Wideman said those tools and the students' mindset can serve them in countless ways in the future.
"They learned a lot about structure and how they can use that to engineer what their vision is, for their bubble wand," she explained.
The first order was a breakdown on what a wand is and what works best.
"When you look at the design of a bubble wand, you look at what kind of material are you using, how long is it, how wide is it, where you put the bubble solution on," Wideman said. "They have to look at all of those pieces of it in order to know if it's going to be a good, sturdy bubble wand."
Life lessons
Contrary to popular sentiment, failure is an option. But don't call it a deterrent, it's just part of the lesson.
"I think they enjoyed just learning how we use failure as a part of success," Wideman said. "They might not have enjoyed that the whole way, but that was one lesson they learned they had to work through."
Failure allowed for experimentation, which allowed for creativity, which then sometimes still resulted in a different kind of failure but not always.
The students' eventual triumphs were seen in every one of their faces.
"I hope they take away that failure is a part of our success, no matter what we're doing, and I hope they take away that they can achieve hard things," Wideman said. "That's so applicable to every part of life."
