Godwin Heights — Sixth-grader Lucelinda Hernandez had four pennies left at the end of a budgeting exercise. She considered placing the money in savings, but opted for a vacation instead.
“You know you could have saved those pennies every month and then gone on a bigger vacation later?” said Godwin Heights High math teacher Maggie Hulsebus.
But Lucelinda was happy with her choices.
“She did pretty well,” said her sister, Emily Turek, before trying her hand at the budgeting activity. “I think the activity does give you a sense of what it is like to plan with your money.”
That activity and a bridge-building exercise were new at this year’s annual STEM Night, held at the high school. Designed for students in sixth-12th grades and their families, the event is focused on science, technology, engineering and math activities that are examples of what students are doing in classrooms.
Essentials & Non-essentials
The STEM Night budgeting activity was based on a similar one that high school math teacher Alexi Wolf does with her students, though less in-depth than the classroom activity.
Because the STEM Night was open to a range of ages, Wolf and Hulsebus simplified the task. Students had 20 pennies they could use to cover a month of expenses. They first considered basic life expenses such as housing, property insurance, food, transportation, car insurance, health insurance, phone and internet.
If a student opts to live with family for housing, they may not need property insurance, Hulsebus pointed out. But those with a car would be required to have car insurance.
After the basics were covered, students could consider the fun items such as shopping, recreation, and hygiene and beauty. Whatever money they had left from those expenses, they could opt to place it in savings.
When eighth-grader Macy Haunhorst sat down, she knew right away that she wanted unlimited data for her phone and gave up renting her own place just to have it. Macy said she had to have full access to her phone.
“We like doing this at STEM night because the parents are here and they take over coaching the students on their decisions,” Hulsebus said, adding parents will point out items students do not realize they need when living on their own, such as health insurance.
Materials, Budget, Strength
Just a couple steps from the budgeting exercise, students tried to answer the question “Would your bridge hold a stuffed animal?” by constructing a bridge using 22 wooden clothespins and 22 cardboard tongue depressors.
“Within my classroom, we do several projects where students are given the assignment of building a structure with certain criteria and constraints,” said sixth-grade science teacher Renae Hackley, who designed the activity with seventh-grade science teacher Mandy Goossen.
“They don’t always like it, but it does get students to think outside of the box,” Hackley added.
Senior Henry Rivera thought outside the box by incorporating the backs of chairs to build his structure, which Hackley said was within the rules. Rivera’s first attempt failed, but his second attempt held a stuffed mouse.
The minute ninth-grader Kandiee Aguilar found out that someone had beat her record of the most stuffed animals held, she built a new bridge that held all five of the stuffed animals available by modifying her design.
“I was building it vertically with the clothespins, but then I started to look at what I had built and realized that if I placed the pieces horizontally, there was more space and more structure,” Kandiee explained.
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