STEM event at the Boat Museum

We had a great 3 days at Ellesmere Port's STEM event which was held at the National Waterways boat museum. This collection of Victorian buildings comes complete with cobble stone paths, narrow boats and canals!! It is an amazing space to work in - our wood framed room up in the ceiling space looked out right over the ship canal and occasionally we saw huge ships float past on their way to the dock.

When we arrived the room was set up for a conference complete with lovely leather chairs - so we dismantled the room, moved all those chairs to protect them from our chemicals and set up for a hands on classroom session.
For the three days we were there we had 5 sessions each day with quite small numbers - the largest group was only 28 - which meant we could have quality time with each pupil.
We shared our smart materials especially the handwarmers, the colour change straws, the heat sensitive paper and the hydrochromic shower curtain.

We then made bath bombs which were a great success and if there was time at the end we shared some of our other goodies such as the energy sticks, the hydrogel balls and the rainbow glasses.

All the pupils were brilliant and really enjoyed themselves. They were asked to write feedback on Post It noted so we created a huge wall of comments.
      " it was awesome!"    "I can't wait to use my bath bomb"     "Science is huge fun"

were just some of the comments left along with lots of smiley faces and thumbs up

We even got our photo taken with the mayor!!