Sand Mountain Reporter

Astronauts have to eat, but kindergarten student Makenlee Beck wasn’t so sure about the “space pudding” her teacher Sonya Hester was showing them how to make Thursday at Boaz Elementary School.

But once she tried it, she seemed to enjoy the chocolatey taste.

Hester’s class focused on aerospace as part of NASA Week activities at all five Boaz schools. Scientists from all over the country, including three from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, are visiting the schools and providing presentations and hands-on demonstrations.

All week, Boaz students have been exposed to presentations by experts in the aerospace field as well as hands-on demonstrations like a planetarium and the 1/25th scale model of the space shuttle Discovery (not 1/125th as reported in The Reporter on Thursday).

Hester’s kindergarten students spent some of their time inside a plastic “space bubble” while students made “space pudding” in sandwich bags and learned about the difference between dried bananas and regular bananas.

“We’ve talked about being an astronaut, going into space and the space shuttle,” Hester said. “Having a special week like this enhances the science program. You actually get a week set aside for specific topics instead of trying to integrate it into your regular curriculum.”

Hester’s students, like Jason Watts and Rylee Neisler, enjoyed the hands-on demonstrations most. The two 5-year-olds agreed the chocolate “space pudding” was a particular highlight.

Hester’s students also wore yellow ACE T-shirts. ACE, or Aerospace Connections in Education, is a program focusing on aerospace awareness, character and physical fitness implemented as a precursor to Boaz’s Civil Air Patrol, or CAP.

Lynn Toney, gifted specialist for K-12 at Boaz Intermediate School, said ACE exposes students in grades K through fifth to the aerospace field and preps them to decide if they want to continue in the CAP when they reach sixth grade.

Toney said three of the NASA scientists each volunteered two hours to spend with the cadets of Boaz CAP Squadron AL 801 on Thursday night. They were Shari Asplund, Alan Gould and John Ristvey.

“It was a very private and wonderful session just for the cadets,” Toney said.

Toney reported CAP cadet Jacob Elrod, a seventh-grader at Boaz Middle School, said, “Being a cadet in the AL 801 gave me the opportunity to get three extra lessons from these geniuses. I thought last night was ‘scientastical.’”

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Publisher: Ben Shurett

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