This week, we’re helping a Florida fifth grade that wants to do a fun science lab, and a Kansas City alternative public school program that’s still distance-learning and needs engaging science projects to send home. 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 Florida teacher wants to offer her diverse fifth grade class exciting science projects, and a student actually suggested this one. We have a chance here to get it to happen with help from 2x matching funds: Donations to this project are now being matched, thanks to support from Kleenex® Brand. In this vital back to school season, Kleenex wants to ensure that teachers can count on the supplies they need to help students thrive.
MAIN PROJECT
Resources: Help me give my students a fun, hands-on science project about chemical reaction. We will be using the mini-notebooks to write a step-by-step instruction manual for making LAVA LAMPS! The other materials assist us in creating these books!
Economic need: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Port Salerno Elementary School, Stuart, Florida
Total: $229.82 (2x matching funds from Kleenex® Brand)
Still Needed: $229.82 Completed! Thank you! Please see next project.
Teacher’s Comments from Ms. Jamison:
My Students: My students are a fun-loving, hard-working, and motivated group of fifth graders. We are diverse, with both English and Spanish as well as dialects, such as Mayan, being spoken in our classroom. Your funding will help us in so many ways!
When you walk into our classroom, a sense of kindness, love of learning, family and strong community are some of the things you feel.
We love each other deeply, we are each other's biggest fans, and we hold each other to high standards.
While we all make mistakes, we know that mistakes help us learn, make us stronger, and help us grow! We are a lively, loving, and hard-working bunch, and we can't wait for you to get to know us!
My Project: One of my students actually sent this idea to me as something "that we could do when we learn about chemical reactions."
These materials will help make my students learning fun and meaningful.
The oil will be used with the alka seltzer tablets to create their own lava lamps in the plastic bottles. The food coloring will help them add colors of all kinds to their oil. When they run out of bubbles, they can simply add another alka seltzer! The gel pens and notebooks are for the kids to make their own step-by-step instruction manuals for "Make Your Own Lava Lamp." The pencil sharpener is for our whole class to use. Ours just broke.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
(See also: 1 hour of footage of these doing their thing, in many colors.)
This teacher, in a Kansas City elementary school program for children who struggle in a more traditional setting, needs supplies to help bring hands-on science projects to students who are still learning from home. We made good progress on this last week!
LONG-TERM PROJECT
Resources: Help me give my students options for learning our Earth Science curriculum of Earth Science using hands on experiences with the kits. The magnetic tiles will provide social interactions following the extended quarantine.
Economic need: Nearly all students from low‑income households
Location: Success Academy at Knotts, Kansas City, Missouri
Total: $278.93
Still Needed: $188.93 $153.93
Teacher’s Comments from Ms. Kerans:
My Students: My students are among the brightest yet most deprived students in our urban community. All qualify to receive free lunch. The typical school environment has not been one in which they have thrived; thus, they are attending our alternative learning school.
We are dedicated to providing an education to meet their academic needs while helping them to overcome many of the obstacles in their lives which may have been handed to them through generational poverty.
The traditional learning expectations have encouraged many students to drop out of school, thus impacting their future success. Our goal is to lead by example with a work ethic and high character. We want each student to feel loved, valued, and respected. We can accomplish this by meeting them where they are, setting high expectations, and permitting them to help us understand how to meet their goals.
My Project: Currently we are in a distance learning. These hands-on materials will help our alternative learning style students. They will be able to build the sun and moon rotations and physically observe the changes causing eclipses and phases of the sun and moon. I can share these at home with the school supplies to supplement our online lessons.
The magnetic tiles will serve as students work to rebuild social interactions following the extended quarantine.
We can also extend learning in our Geometry Math curriculum by building and naming the various shapes.
Donations of ANY size can make a BIG difference!
Sail car kits are on the project’s list too!
With out help, our main project from last week was completed!
Mrs. C’s kindergarten, in Gulf coast Louisiana, was about to open, after several delays, when Hurricane Laura came through and damaged the school buildings. Now, she needed more supplies for her students to continue their remote learning, and families weren’t in a position to help. The project was Learning After Laura.
She writes: Thank you so much for your support! Our students are so blessed by your generosity. Teaching during this time of pandemic and the aftermath of a hurricane has had its challenges, but these materials will go a long way to supporting our students in a virtual setting and virtual learning.
Our Dollars at Work
In January of 2019, we helped Mrs. B.'s STEM lab in an elementary school in southern Virginia. She needed to challenge her students with a supply of kits containing equipment to do an assortment of science labs. The project was STEM! All Day Every Day! (More photos at the link.)
There aren't enough words that I can thank you for your generous donations to our Donor's Choose Science project with. The STEM Kits you donated from Carolina Biological are helping my students each week to have a deeper understanding of the world around them through science and STEM. I am using these kits each week with my Mad Science Squad, Grades 3-5, and my JR Mad Science Squad, Grades 1-2, helping them to learn the scientific method and the engineering design process. They get to complete a full experiment or build a prototype and test it each week. They then get to make real world connections from these experiences.
With your help, I am now able to conduct these types of scientific learning experiences with more students on a weekly basis instead of monthly. They leave my lab each week so excited telling other students about what they learned. You have made this possible and I deeply thank you. Your kindness and willingness to give towards our STEM mission is truly appreciated.
Through your generosity, I am going to be able to continue the Science Squad for the remainder of the school year and add more students. My next plans are starting Family Science Camps for remediation and I would also like to have some of my student science leaders take part in teaching the younger students how to conduct science experiments using some of the kits we received from your donations. This is all possible because of you. Thank you.
Founded in 2009, The Inoculation Project combats the anti-science push in conservative America by funding science and math projects in 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 science or math projects, 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 850! The success-list diary also contains links and additional information about DonorsChoose.org.