For kids like Malia Primacio—who wants to be a forensic scientist someday—interactive, creative and experiential activities make learning science, technology, engineering and mathematical concepts engaging and fun.

 “STEM is actually really fun for me because we can make our imagination run wild, and we can go out of the box and think big,” Malia, a fourth grader, said. “My favorite thing about science is learning about new things and always trying out something new and making stuff. I've always loved experiments, and I've always loved making stuff and being creative. I love kind of blowing stuff up. Science and learning is about getting messy, because if you don't get messy, how are you going to learn?”

Malia got to play, explore, build, plant, experiment and get messy at Hawthorn Academy’s Family STEM Night held April 17 at the West Jordan campus. 

“We just want to provide a night where families and students can come in and have some positive experiences with STEM so that they're encouraged to try new things and just have a night as a family,” Hawthorn Academy STEM coordinator Joy Leavitt said. “It's just always fun for me to see everybody come and enjoy themselves, and it makes my heart happy when I see that happening.”

With the theme of “Unleash Your Creativity: The Sky’s the Limit” as inspiration, Leavitt gathered supplies for students and their families to make lava lamps, catapults, marble runs, kazoos and foil boats in various rooms around the school building.

Fourth grader Allison Ripley enjoyed the hands-on activities such as making an alien parachute, a magnetic maze and a Morse code bracelet.

“She likes to do a lot of different crafty activities, and when it involves science, that makes it fun for her,” Allison’s mother Jackie Ripley said.

Kaeli Warner said the annual STEM Night gives her four kids, ranging in age from kindergarten to sixth grade, a chance to do educational—and messy—experiments.

“They’re using more of their brain, the creative juices are flowing with all the activities I don’t care to do at home with them—I don’t want to get out the lava lamp ingredients,” Warner said.

Some of the activities were sponsored by community partners, such as Nerdly Tutoring and a local ham radio operator, but overall, Leavitt relied on Hawthorn Academy teachers to provide instructions and support at each station.

“I am just so grateful for the teachers, because I really could not have done it without them,” Leavitt said. “I'm just so grateful for their willingness to do that in their evening.”

Hawthorn Academy science teacher Jason Guy built a rocket launcher which drew a large crowd. Seeing how high the rocket could go quickly became one of the most popular activities of the night.

“Kids loved the rockets,” Leavitt said. “They were really fun because he was outside, and he was able to turn up the pressure so they went pretty high. That was really fun.”

Another popular activity was planting vegetable seeds for students to take home and grow. Students also were given a packet of flower seeds, which had been harvested by students at the south campus STEM Night held the previous night. λ