ROCKET SCIENCE: Delmae Elementary 4th-graders get hands on with STEM

“A lot of the things that we get to do in STEM class are very similar to what you’re seeing tonight,” Delmae Elementary STEM teacher Carson Kleinknecht said. “A lot of times, kids don’t realize they are learning.”

Duke Energy was the event’s sponsor and provided all of the needed supplies for the stations. Students were allowed to take home anything they made at STEM Night.

Each station taught students something about science, technology, engineering and math through hands-on learning guided by the school’s teachers. Stations like “reading tree rings” taught students about biology, while “binary bracelets” taught them about binary computer coding.

Other stations included a paper cutout of a robot that “climbed” down a string and a digital microscope that students could use to look at objects like cotton and wood grain.

Kleinknecht said STEM is important to teach at a young age because it gets children excited and thinking about their future careers.

“Without these jobs, we wouldn’t be able to be a working society, so it’s important now to get them excited and go ahead and have that mindset of the impact that they can make in our community, in our world, using the STEM skills they learn now,” she said.

STEM Education Month is put on by the South Carolina Coalition for Mathematics and Science, which partners with the Duke Energy Foundation and the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to produce materials for similar school events throughout South Carolina.