Jessica's blog

and we here at the YES program already know how great it is, but it makes us feel all warm and fuzzy when members of the museum education community also recognize the positive contributions our YES teens make to the STL area. Nina Simon, author of The Participatory Museum, recently blogged about her recent experience at the Taylor building and what she learned from the YES teens and our programs. Be sure to check out the picture of our very own Science Afterschool members working with students visiting from IL. They were looking for worms for an exploration activity this past spring. 

The YES program is gearing up for our summer session. Last week marked the last Saturday Learning Lab for the spring semester. However, we eagerly welcomed 57 New Teens into the program this Saturday, May 1. 

While we're waiting for summer sessions to begin let's take a look at some of the highlights of 2009-2010 year. Enjoy! 

Be sure to check our blog for more information on summer sessions and New Teen labs! 

In our final week of the spring semester we wrapped up exploring our questions around worms. We counted our worms first. We had 20 worms from the store the first week, and 20 worms we dug up in Science Corner beds. This past week, 5 weeks later, we only found13 store bought worms, and 9 Science Corner worms. Why do you think that is? We decided it could be because the worms were just difficult to find, that we didn't try long enough, or that they actually died and their bodies became too difficult to find. 

After we counted our worms we reexamined some of the questions that we had our first week. Small groups of YES teens investigated whether a worm would respond to light, why they thought the worm kept coming off the plate, how fast a worm could go, and would worms crawl toward each other. Groups conducted their experiment and then presented out to the group. 

Okay, staff is slacking on getting in some real quality pictures. I guess they're too busy taking the pictures they aren't in any of them!

Here's one from last fall. Chastity, YES Coach in the Communicating Climate Change (C3) component, joins YES teens on a field survey. The group walked the field counting butterflies and looking for other interesting insects, plants, and wildlife. They're showing off their finds. Is that a persimmon?

Before spring break we continued our challenge with bubbles and tried to see if we could fit a "kid", or in this case a YES teen, inside a bubble. YES teens used their inquiry skills and discovered that some techniques worked better than others. See below for a photo blog of the action. 

First, we added dish soap to water. What do you suppose is the best ratio of soap to water? 

This blog is late, but I wanted to share it because the sophomore grouped worked so well on it. Each week in College Prep we address issues, skills, topics of interest to better prepare students for life after high school. This challenge was to use math in a comic strip. Your group had to illustrate (pun!) a situation where math was being used, and it was supposed to be funny. At least to you. :) Click here for all the comics. 

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Staff Picture of the Week (at Kerry's request)

Submitted by Jessica on Sat, 02/13/2010 - 9:33am. Staff Picture of the Week

Okay, I'm not normally all about self promotion. :) This week Kerry led the monthly Community Partners meeting. Each month we invite local community organizations to the Taylor building where we showcase a particular science activity or set of activities, talk about what's happening around town, and give youth care providers a chance to mingle with other organizations. This month's topic was climate change. Kerry presented a variety of activities to educate about the effects of greenhouse gasses. Pictured here is a Polar Bear activity developed by one of our YES teens. The object is to get all the fish to eat before all your ice melts away. The white papers are ice floats and the blue papers represent water melting those ice pieces away. You can only step on the white ones. Those polar bears are going to have to be pretty agile. The lesson learned: Emitting less carbon gasses helps keep the glaciers from melting, which assists polar bears with getting food. Check out your carbon footprint and what you can do to make better choices today! 

 

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