More than 75 young students spent a Saturday morning launching ghost rockets, floating foil boats and steering robots at the Corinth School District’s Corinth STEM camp. The district’s “Fall into STEM” Saturday camp on Oct. 17 offered hands-on science, technology, engineering and math activities with a fall theme for students from pre-K through sixth grade.
The district shared a recap of the camp this week. It said the activities were planned to spark imagination and curiosity, with a different project for each grade level.
Corinth STEM Camp Activities by Grade
Each grade had its own seasonal experiments and builds:
Pre-K: made fall wreaths and painted wooden pumpkins.
Kindergarten: used balloons charged with static electricity to make tissue-paper ghosts fly, then built aluminum foil boats to see how many candy pumpkins each one could hold before sinking.
First grade: read about Spookley, the Square Pumpkin, and built square pumpkins from popsicle sticks.
Second grade: made pumpkin poppers out of cups, balloons and pom-poms and launched ghost rockets.
Third grade: ran an “exploding leaf” chemical reaction with vinegar and baking soda and built spiders from zip ties.
Fourth grade: built 3D tree models from foam and construction paper.
Fifth and sixth grades: drew mazes on water bottles and moved paper clips through them with magnets.
Younger students also worked together on a giant tissue-paper pumpkin in the school’s Makerspace. Older students made small fall artworks in craft-stick frames.
Students Describe the Experiments
First grader Tripp Yeates said he learned the stages of a pumpkin’s life cycle, “seed, sprout, vine, green pumpkin and ripe pumpkin,” and that pumpkins come in more colors than orange.
The third-grade leaf experiment was a favorite. Third grader JD Devers described adding baking soda and soap to a bag of vinegar and colored tissue paper until it foamed over. “It made me think it was about to really explode,” he said. Classmate Karleigh Gaines said she played it safe and used only two scoops of baking soda.
High School Culinary Students Join In
Corinth High School Culinary Arts students helped every camper make an edible spider web. They built the webs from pretzel sticks held together with melted white chocolate, then added chocolate spiders and sprinkle “bugs.”
CHS Culinary Arts teacher Kristie Studdard said her class tested the treat ahead of time during its “Fun Food Friday” lessons. She said the high schoolers felt it fit the engineering part of STEM Saturday because the campers had to put the web together themselves.
The camp also had a robotics and engineering station. There, students used iPads and coding apps to program and drive Dash and Dot robots with block-based or text-based commands.
Next STEM Saturday Set for Dec. 12
The district has already set its next camp. “Deck the Halls with STEM” is scheduled for Saturday, Dec. 12. Families can register through the Corinth School District website at corinth.k12.ms.us.
Saturday camps like this one give younger students extra time on hands-on projects that can be hard to fit into a regular school day. They also bring the district’s high school students in as helpers and role models.
Jon R Myers is the executive editor of Alcorn County News and the founder of the Mississippi News Group, which he started in 2013 to cover communities across North Mississippi. He also founded the Mississippi Sports Group in 2006, which grew from a single community publication into a statewide network covering high school and college athletics. He reports on local government, public safety, schools and community life in Corinth and Alcorn County, working from public meetings, agency records and interviews with the people involved. Contact him at editor@alcornnewsms.com with news tips or corrections. For a correction, include the article link and supporting source material.
Stay connected
Your community. Wherever you are.
Follow Alcorn County News on Facebook for local news from Corinth and across Alcorn County.
