Patriot Elementary’s SMART Night draws record attendance
Patriot Elementary School hosted its last academic event on Monday, attracting more than 600 students and parents who wanted to participate in SMART night heralding science, math and related technology.
The event attracted 160 people last year.
SMART night was designed for parents to have a fun, educational evening with children, by visiting 14 classrooms that were set up with multi-age activities based on science, technology or math.
“All the rooms were packed,” Patriot Elementary School Principal Carol Bromby said. “We had whole families come.”
Those activities included nature rubbings, magnet mania, phases of the moon, Mentos volcanoes, electrical conductors, oobleck, tangram pictures, koosh ball math, taste the rainbow graph, remote response clickers, SMART board geometry jeopardy and solid figures, let’s be logical, computer lab showcase, STEMtastic and confection concoction.
“They loved it and wanted it longer,” Bromby said about the attendees.
She said the students’ favorite activities were the Mentos volcanoes, oobleck, which gave the students the opportunity to make green slime with corn starch, along with phases of the moon, which were made with Oreo cookies.
The students were given punch cards during the event, so they could receive a punch for the different activities they did.
At the end of the night, the students paid a visit to the confection concoction to enjoy a root beer float and pizza after they turned in their punch card.
Bromby said they pulled 20 punch cards and provided a $5 gift certificate to students for the book fair.
The students were also sent away with a paperback science book that was donated, magnify glass, free ice cream coupons and bookmarks.
Bromby said they tried to get an accurate count of how many would be attending the event before Monday so they could have enough root beer floats for those who attended. She said they were only prepared to serve 400. One of the teachers made an ice cream run after they went through a tub of ice cream that the Ice Cream Club donated.
Patriot Elementary also held Indulge in Reading and S’More Writing Night this year to get parents and students involved in academics. Bromby said although the other two events were very successful, SMART night was the biggest event of the three.
Next year, Bromby said they may offer a spaghetti dinner before SMART night, so parents can come after work.