Local Area Grant Funds Rocketry Lessons Project
Thanks to a nearly $3,000 grant from the L.P. “Pat” Mullen Fund through the Greater Salina Community Foundation, elementary school students in Salina had the opportunity to learn more about space exploration - and even launch their own rocket - in April and May of 2021.
More than 100 fifth grade students at Oakdale Elementary School and Schilling Elementary School participated in five interactive science lessons that used space exploration to discover concepts such as Newton’s Laws of Motion. They also received a personal copy of “Chasing Space,” and the science classes’ libraries received new copies of “Hidden Figures (Young Readers Edition),” “Endurance: My Year in Space and How I Got There (Young Reader Edition),” “The Magic School Bus Lost in the Solar System,” and “It’s a Question of Space: An Ordinary Astronaut’s Answers to Sometimes Extraordinary Questions.”
As a final project, all students also got to build an Alpha model rocket and launch it! Students celebrated the completion of the project by launching their rockets on May 10, 13, 17, 18, and 19.