This week, we’re helping two early-childhood projects: blocks and building tools for a Texas pre-kindergarten class, and MakerSpace materials for a Missouri second grade. We hope that readers who support quality public school education will help by sharing or supporting our featured projects.
The Inoculation Project is an ongoing, volunteer effort to crowdfund science and math projects for red-state public schools in low-income neighborhoods. As always, our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation that facilitates tax-deductible donations to specific, vetted projects in public schools.
This school on the Texas gulf coast sustained heavy damage in Hurricane Harvey. Now, Ms. Griffith is looking for some blocks and other tools to help her pre-K students learn about simple machines and understand very basic physics. Donations to this project are currently being matched by the Rebuild Texas Fund: The Rebuild Texas Fund is committed to supporting those on the ground doing the hard work of recovering from Hurricane Harvey.
MAIN PROJECT
Resources: Help me give my students hands-on experiences with cause and effect as they raise and lower objects on an elevator, move blocks on a conveyor and discover speed and momentum of rolling objects.
Economic need: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Wheatley School Early Childhood, Port Arthur, Texas
Total: $362.47 (matching funds from the Rebuild Texas Fund )
Still Needed: $362.47 COMPLETED! Please see project below!
Teacher’s Comments from Ms.Griffith:
My Students: As a teacher in a low-income school district which was heavily flooded by Hurricane Harvey many of my students face several challenges both in and out of the class. Early Childhood is such an exciting group of mixed interests, abilities, and goals. Some of my students are learning to read, write, and count, while some of their classmates are learning to imitate sounds or hold a paintbrush. Our group loves hands on learning activities.
My class consists of 18 awesome and appreciative children.
My children are eager to learn and are always excited about new concepts and ways to learn them.
Despite their academic and physical struggles, I want to provide my students with creative, hands on and meaningful learning experiences.
My Project: Our children will learn how simple machines make work easier! We will ramp up our block center excitement! Children will build, test and experiment, they will develop critical thinking, early STEM skills and explore motion, friction, and cause and effect.
Simple Machines, Ramps, Roll, and Race resources will help teach children more about each of these machines and help develop skills in exploring motion, friction and angles that are important solutions in helping engineers, and all humans, do hard work.
Our children will be using evidence, discussing ideas about
what is making something move the way it does
and how some movements can be controlled. They will also explore and describe various actions that can change an object’s motion.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
This small rural Missouri school is located very near the Kansas border, about equally far from Kansas City to the north and Joplin to the south; its relative poverty and isolated location conspire to limit children’s experiences.
LONG-TERM PROJECT
Resources: Help me give my students a variety of eight different kinds of supplies and tools for their MakerSpace station.
Economic need: More than half of students from low‑income households
Location: Hume R8 School, Hume, Missouri
Total: $291.93
Still Needed: $291.93 $133.93
Teacher’s Comments from Mrs. Schow:
My Students: My students are growing, learning and making lifelong friends in a small community within a great little school. They are dreamers, thinkers, talkers, questioners and hard workers. They come into the room each morning with excitement on their faces and eager to learn new innovative things.
Our Pre-K through 12 school has an average class size of 12.
This community is comprised mainly of farmers and ranchers. Our location is very secluded. We have very few academic resources available. Traveling is required for day-to-day needs such as groceries, gas, clothing, and so on.
Students are faced with many challenges each day. The majority of the students come from poverty and/or single parent homes. Although this is a low socioeconomic community, it is very family oriented and close-knit. We feel that our students deserve the same quality education and resources needed to maximize learning as students at other schools that are not faced with the same economic challenges.
My Project: These 8 MakerSpace Sets include; a tool pack, wire, plastic tubing, wooden & foam shapes, craft tubes, wheels & propellers, and several types of containers. These MakerSpace resources will also encourage originality and ingenuity. We have an area in our classroom where MakerSpace is used, fostered and inspiration evolves there.
MakerSpace builds confidence and encourages creativity, innovation, and "out-of-the-box" thinking.
We welcome this variety of resources and tools to give us the opportunity to have more challenging science skills and "hands-on" activities for our students.
By donating to this project, you will be supporting boys and girls by opening the STEM doors to all of our students. You will help make a difference because neither the school nor I have more funds to purchase these additional resources for our students. Your donation will make this happen in our classroom!
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Our two projects from last week were completed! In Locating the Hidden Figures in My Classroom!, Mrs. McFarland’s Arkansas 8th graders will each get a copy of the book Hidden Figures, which they’ll read and research in their computer class. She writes: Thank you for your generous support of my classroom, and giving my students their own copies of the book Hidden Figures so that we can learn about diversity, compassion, and determination. This book study will allow my students to reflect on the past while preparing for their future. With your help my students will now be able to explore the how, why, when, where, and what they will be doing with their lives. Thank you again for making this project possible.
Ms. May is the librarian for an elementary school in Louisiana. Her project STEM Books for Emergent Readers will bring a bundle of new non-fiction books about science and social studies to her young readers. I love her note! She writes: I am so touched by the generosity and kindness that you have shown my students. The science books that you have funded will continue to be used by children for many years in my school's library. Never underestimate how the spark of inspiration can influence a child. I am very weepy at the moment. I truly needed these books and had no way to buy them. I didn't think that it was even possible.
Our Dollars at Work
In June, we helped Mrs. Noland’s 3rd-5th grade music students in Texas get a programmable robot that they can teach to play songs on the xylophone The project was Robots and Music?!! The future is here now! (More photos at the link.)
The students were so excited to meet their new robot friend in music class, DASH. He is currently being used to allow the students to compose music and listen to the robot play the songs they created! He will also be used in other classes to further their science skills.
Without your donation, they would not be given this opportunity to see their music skills brought to life. The robot brings science and computer coding into their music classroom reinforcing skills being taught in other subjects.
Thanks again for your generous support!!
Founded in 2009, The Inoculation Project combats the anti-science push in conservative America by funding science and math projects in traditionally red-state classrooms and libraries. Our conduit is DonorsChoose.org, a crowdfunding charity founded in 2000 and highly rated by both Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau.
Every Sunday, we focus on helping to fund two science or math projects in red states, preferably in neighborhood public schools where the overwhelming majority of students come from low-income households. We welcome everyone who supports public school education — no money is required!
Finally, here’s our list of successfully funded projects — our series total is 719! The success-list diary also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose.org.