Second grade students at SPARK Academy at Cowart Elementary have put their creativity and STEM knowledge to the test Thursday and Friday as they teamed up with engineering students at Athens High School. The SPARK students used pretend money to buy materials for water bottle cars they had designed and the high school students assisted them in constructing them.

The students follow an engineering process of ask, imagine, plan, create, test, improve, share, and goal. This process is taught in all of the SPARK classes and labs.

“We are working through our engineering process. They go to Spark lab once a week and during that time, they drew sketches and talked about their design. They were also doing a money unit. We used our money unit along with the engineering design so students had a chance to practice counting their money while building, creating, trying, and testing whether their design worked or not and coming back to it and redesigning it,” SPARK second-grade teacher Heather Patterson said.

Coming to the high school and working with the older kids is something the young kids really look forward to doing.

“Its a great opportunity for them to learn from the big kids. It’s also a great for the big kids to learn from the little ones and help them out,” Patterson said.

Second grader Jaxton Birdsong, who loves Hot Wheels and fast cars, was excited to select his materials. “I am building a water bottle car,” he said. For his design he needed three paper clips, a water bottle, tape, bottle caps, and two straws.

Once the materials were selected, the students began assembling their water bottle cars with their high school mentors.

Sophomore Zach Williams said, “It’s fun to help them and get them liking STEM. If they enjoy doing this, they might join into these kind of classes and help them grow.”

Two girls teamed with senior engineering student Asa Savoie for their project and were eager to test their cars. He was happy to lend a hand to the younger students. “I am having a good time,” he said. “I really enjoy it because I am happy to be someone who may spark this interest so they might come take these classes one day. My class right now has zero girls in it. We need more girls that are interested in it and we need to let them have the opportunity to get interested in it, like today.”

AHS engineer and design teacher and Technology Student Association sponsor Michael May said that they combined the two engineering classes at AHS to help with the construction phase of the SPARK students’ designs. He hopes his students will benefit from the mentoring position as well as instilling in the younger students to always pay attention in class and always do their best.

“We’ve actually had some of the kids be inspired to go into education. A big part of our program is trying to give back and having a positive impact. We talk about engineering and skill sets to make the world better. This provides an opportunity for them to start that process and be a good influence on the younger kids, ” May said.

Jennifer Kennedy is the STEM Specialist at SPARK. She gave credit to the students at AHS for coming up with the idea to help the younger students combine practicing counting money with the fun engineering project.

“Really, building the car is the fun part. The learning we did was, how do you count the coins out? We will take the cars back to SPARK this afternoon and they will be able to change them or improve them. We will test them this afternoon,” Kennedy said.

AHS senior engineering student Jackson Walker presented his idea for the challenge during a group think tank. “We came up with this design for this program where we build something they can take home. Other designs, they do something here, but they can’t take things home because it would be a lot of effort. Today, they have to have the coins and parts to build. We thought if we had the shop, they could sort their coins plus build something they could take home. It wasn’t just me, everyone pitched ideas.”

Walker hopes challenges, such as the water bottle cars, will also build fun memories for the kids. He said, “It’s fun because you are helping them. I remember as a kid, we didn’t really have any of this. We went on field trips to science museums and stuff. That’s some of my fondest memories — going to science museums with my friends. They are here with their friends, they are building something, and they have something they will have on their shelves at home. Maybe it will inspire them to do something bigger when they are older.”