STEM Den Year 2

Well, as you can see, I was busy last year, since I haven't posted in a very long while.  My quick summary of STEM Den is this: a dozen kids showed up for the first meeting in my not-nearly-big-enough living room.  The boys were a wee bit distracted by the degus running around their cage, but enjoyed the color separation from the leaf color chromatography experiment. 

Welcome!

I'm mainly starting this blog as part of my second year as a STEM mentor in my sons' cub scout pack.  Last year, my oldest was the first boy in our council to receive both the Nova and Supernova awards. [Unconfirmed tidbit from my cubmaster: he was the first scout to receive the Luis Alvarez Supernova Award in the state!]  He was my only scout, so the lesson plans we very organically made.  For example, we were making ice marbles one day, and he asked how long were they going to take to freeze.  When I responded "I don't know, why don't you figure it out", the experiment "Do ice marbles freeze faster on dirt or cement" was born!

This year, there's a lot more boys interested, about 9, in fact! So I need to be a bit more proactive in making my lesson plans, getting my materials together, that kind of thing.  My plan is compile a "mentor manual" with all the information needed to run an hour meeting (experiment directions, worksheets for the kids, discussion points, etc).  I'll post the lessons here, as well as a post-meeting breakdown.  Hopefully, it'll be how all the boys were all smiles!

A few side notes, while I'm working within the requirements of the Cub Scout Nova, Alvarez Supernova and Townes Supernova, the activities here are in no way restricted to kids in those programs.  Please feel free to use anything towards Girl Scouts/Brownies badges, for Science Fair entries, as part of a Family Science Night at school, or even just for fun! (yes, I do Science for fun!).

Hopefully, you'll find something here that will help you want to raise the next generation of geeks!