Families Gather at Ferguson for Evening of Learning and Fun
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Mazama STEM&M student Jeremy Mathews helps Cedric Reid use a remote control to drive a robot while Cedric’s grandmother, Lila Dickinson, and mother, Laura Reid, watch.
School’s annual Family Fun Night event attended by more than 400
The blender for smoothies at Ferguson’s Annual Family Fun Night needed power – leg power. To get a smoothie, students lined up to take turns on the “Smoothie Bike,” pedaling to blend the fruit and ice into a nutritious drink.
More than 400 people showed up for the fourth-annual event Thursday at Ferguson Elementary School to learn about history, science, art and literacy and experience hands-on activities together.
“We wanted to create that home-to-school connection and emphasis time spent together as a family,” said Jessica Norris, a first-grade teacher at Ferguson who, with a group of teachers, started the event four years ago. The event is organized by Ferguson teachers and they volunteer their time to make it happen.
"The teachers lead this project because they feel it's important to get families involved in their child's education," said Kelley Fritz, principal of Ferguson Elementary School.
The event filled the school. A food truck served tacos and inside, event goers could buy snacks and slices of pizza.
Mazama High School’s robotics, STEM&M and Sparrow clubs offered science and art activities, from creating “ooblek” to driving a robotic machine using a remote control. Classrooms also offered math and reading games and activities that parents could then take with them and use again at home.
In addition, activities were hosted by fifth- and sixth-graders at Ferguson, Mazama FBLA, Henley and Mazama Kindness Clubs, and Honor Society, the Klamath County Library, the Ferguson Booster Club and Klamath Basin Research and Extension Center. Families also were able to sign up to experience the StarLab, an inflatable planetarium.
Each year, students offer displays and projects. This year, sixth-graders created a “Living Museum” of famous people. The students researched, created a poster with information and fun facts and then stood in the hallways and talked about their person to interested parents and other adults.
Sixth-grader Connor McCool told Jennifer Shirar, a Ferguson parent, about Albert Einstein. “I knew he was really smart so I wanted to find out more about him,” Connor said about why he chose Einstein.
His classmate Brittany Downing chose Eleanor Roosevelt in part because she was a woman. “She loved to help others,” she said after giving a presentation to a group of three parents.
Down the hall, third-grader Callie Grant, with the help of Mazama STEM&M senior Sarah Wells, created a “static” butterfly. After rubbing a balloon on her hair, Grant was able to use the static created to make her butterfly wings move.
Mike Snodgrass played color-coded Jenga with his fifth-grade son Wyatt that included questions that related to the classroom's 13 original colonies presentation.
“It’s also a good time for them to show us what they do in school,” Snodgrass said.
