Elementary students get hands-on activities through CSM science program

OMAHA, Neb. –  Each fourth- and fifth-grader at Blumfield Elementary School took a plastic cup, adding sand, gravel, soil, seeds and even a cricket, to create a hand-held ecosystem.

The hour-long activity at the Ralston school is one of several provided by College of Saint Mary’s (CSM) Elementary Science Outreach Program, which has brought exciting, hands-on activities to classrooms at Omaha metro area schools for more than a decade. The program, which started in 2011, is open to all schools.

One of the program’s goals is to expose children to science-based activities and basic scientific equipment. Activities geared toward students in grades K-2 and 3-5, are diverse and include Introduction to Laboratory Science, Weather, Earth and Its Inhabitants, Electricity, Erosion, Force and Motion, Health and Nutrition, Light and Sound, States of Matter, Ecosystems and Fun with Germs.

“CSM students bring everything,” said Dr. Jennifer Grove, the program’s faculty advisor. “The teachers and students don’t have to supply anything. The kids love it because all these new people come into their classrooms and bring fun, hands-on experiments and projects.

Junior Macy Homes, a biology and business major, serves as the program coordinator, a position funded by a NASA Nebraska grant. She works with student volunteers to schedule the activities, which two to three volunteers lead. Homes said she enjoys teaching the younger students about science.

“This program teaches me new things every time I’m in a classroom,” she said. “I didn’t know a lot about ecosystems. I actually learned from the program, too.”

School budgets are tight, so the program typically offers science in schools that don’t have many resources.

“Science is the bottom of the list for funding at the elementary level,” Grove said. “This is a wonderful partnership for schools.”

Since the fall of 2018, the program has impacted 3,134 students from 30 different schools in the Omaha area. “The year of 2019-20, I think by February, we were already ahead of what we did the previous year, and then we got shut down obviously (due to the coronavirus pandemic),” Dr. Grove said. “We hadn’t even gotten into the spring months.”

Due to the pandemic, activities have been limited. During the 2020-21 school year, CSM students made videos for sharing with the elementary students when visitors weren’t allowed.

“This year has been based upon if the school systems will let visitors come in,” Dr. Grove said.

But Grove expects the program will go back to pre-pandemic levels, and she expects it to continue to grow. CSM students have provided activities in Bennington, Ralston and through Girls Inc. during the 2021-22 school year.