Make a Gummy Bear a 'swell' friend of yours; Break a pencil without touching it; Make a magnifying glass using water; Straw wheels; Oil and Water; Catch a coin; Balloon amplifier; and Match trick were among the activities offered at the March 13th Putnam Valley Elementary School Family Science Night, sponsored by the Putnam Valley PTA Educational Excellence Committee and held in the in the PVES cafeteria.

Putnam Valley parent and PTA volunteer Heidi Gesson organized the evening’s activities with the help of dozens of volunteers of all ages. The room was overflowing with more than 200 eager young researchers and their parents, who traveled from station to station trying out the various experiments.

This year’s Science Night was prefaced by the 2009 PVES Fourth Grade Science Fair. For a number of years the fair has been a staple of the fourth grade curriculum at PVES, with literally scores of dioramas, experiments, and inventions taking up the entire gymnasium, and resulting in a lengthy videotaped tour that appeared on local cable TV. Past experiments have ranged from realistic 3-D depictions of the Solar System to investigations of gravity, light, sound, smell, and speed, to a working hovercraft and a solar oven that baked hotdogs and chocolate chip cookies. This year’s fair was an optional event, with a group of dedicated participants on hand in the corridor outside the PVES cafeteria to demonstrate and explain their work.

Meghan O’Leary proposed to evaluate what types of bird feed appeal most to our area’s birds in the wintertime. She prepared feeders with different types of birdseed and other grains and monitored the number of birds feeding at each one at the same time every day. She then prepared a display with images of the various birds she saw as well as tables indicating her results. The very self-assured fourth grader presented her findings to everyone who visited her display. She also spoke animatedly about the pesky squirrels who decided to participate in her experiment—about five during each viewing period.
The two new highlights of Family Science night were special guests Joe Rao (also a Putnam Valley parent), the News 12 Westchester meteorologist, and Lee Magpili, who is a Lego wizard. Joe Rao’s project was "Get twisted in a tornado with Joe Rao". Children created tornadoes in two-liter soda bottles called Tornado Tubes while Joe explained how tornadoes happen. At the "Sumo wrestle with LEGO robots" exhibit, students had a chance to work with Lee Magpili and with robots made with LEGO.