Hands-on activities help teach Adler Park School students about science, technology, engineering and math

Adler Park Elementary School students rushed from one hands-on activity to another, building, creating and discovering as they participated in STEM Museum Monday in the school gym in Libertyville.

Almost 250 students in grades K-5 moved between 10 science, technology, engineering and math activities set up like a museum. The program was produced by Mobile Ed Productions and funded by the Adler Park Family Association.

"The whole goal is to get students interested in these subjects," said Mark Bishop, the STEM administrator for Mobile Ed Productions. "The majority of the stations here are for a hands-on experience."

Students moved from station to station to build a parabolic arch out of large foam blocks, watch a state-of-the-art 3-D printer make plastic items such as Batman, Darth Vader and a T-Rex, and see and pedal a bike that converted their kinetic energy into electricity.

"I think it's very interesting in seeing how the 3-D printers works and Newton's Laws of Motion creating the electricity," fifth-grader Zach Main said. "It's enjoyable to see something that we probably wouldn't have seen at school actually here."

The program concluded with a demonstration by the state-of-the-art humanoid robot named Nao as it went through its morning exercises and sang "Happy Birthday."