This year I had the pleasure of coaching an Elementary Science Olympiad team of local homeschool students. We got to compete against 17 of the local public schools. For those of you who do not know Science Olympiad is a hodge podge of scientific events that the students compete in in timed rounds against competing schools. The competition we were in was a regional qualifier. So the students that placed got an opportunity to go compete at our state competition and then if they win state they would move onto the National Science Olympiad competition. Science Olympiad spans through grades k-12. But this particular competition was just for elementary grades. They offered well over 20 events but our team competed in 13 of them. I was so proud of our students. They worked really hard in preparation for the competition. We had two of our students place 3rd in the "Can Race" event. I was so excited we placed in our first year going.
The schools support their team through support from the classroom curriculum and teacher volunteers. We had the support of our awesome children's librarian at our local public library and the parent volunteers. Our students practiced hard for 12 weeks leading up to the competition. They learned not only skills in science but good sportsmanship, teamwork, leadership, and perseverance. Because we are homeschool team and we tend to be more age integrated I devised a way for all the students and their siblings to participate and help with the team. The older kids were our Team Mentors, then we had the Competition Team, and of course the Jr. Team members.
On competition day our Team Mentors were a helping hand in making sure the students got to their event rooms. Our Jr. Team got an opportunity to see what they have to look forward to next year when they compete. And of course everyone was there to cheer the Competition Team on!
Here is are the STEAM Powered Homeschoolers all lined up for the Parade before we began the competition.
Mecca the Great was proud of her partner and her's work in the "Straw Tower" event.
Mecca the Great is excitedly waiting to start the "Disease Detective" event.
Kinetic Kid could not wait to blast his rocket in the "Water Rocket" event.
Let's look at the highlights from the weeks leading up to the competition.
We entered several of the Straw Engineering events. We practice the Straw Tower, Straw Egg Drop, and Bridge Building. Our Jr. Team even practice some extreme straw challenges.
Here is Pony Princess holding the big Straw box the Jr. Team was constructing.
Kinetic Kid had a huge challenge on his hands in the "Straw Egg Drop" event. We cracked many an egg preparing for this one.
One of the coolest things about the Science Olympiad Competition was the Build- It Sessions where the students got the opportunity to have access to the power tools necessary to build their rocket launcher and construct our paddle boats. They got assistance from the scientist at our local Science Center which is funded through the county.
Here is Mecca the Great practicing for her very academically heavy events "Weather or Not" and "Disease Detectives".
Pony Princess and our Jr. Team had a ball making tornadoes in a bottle, cleaning up mock oil spills, and doing mystery architecture challenges.
