PHOTOGALLERY: Sumner School District Science Fair and Art Show

On Saturday, students held water bugs, shot bottle rockets and examined rare rocks from around the world without ever leaving the commons of Mountain View Middle School.

The annual brought the community together for a day of games, interactive activities and student projects and displays. While some toured the science and art displays scattered across the campus, parents and children ages 0-8 sat down on some mats in the commons and played with bright-colored building blocks at Block Fest. Members of the Pacific Science Center even came to town for a couple demonstrations.

“We are having a great time, spending the day looking at everything and checking it all out,” said Claudia Donato. She brought her two girls, Sofia, 7, and Francesca, 5. “It’s great for us homeschoolers, to get out to an event like this that’s open to the public.”

Overall, the crowd was smaller than usual, said communications director Ann Cook. The suprisingly nice weather on Saturday afternoon may have played a factor. Student participation district-wide was also low. Only 15 high school students in the district submitted projects to the science fair and about 71 K-5 students participated. Solid numbers for middle school participants were not available at time of publication.

“The weather and school closures played a huge factor in this year’s event,” said Cook. “Many school events and other science fairs were cancelled because of the snow and power outages. Plus, it comes at a busy time of year for a lot of our students, and many of the projects involve a lot of parent involvement, which I think were all affected by the weather.”

The students who participated, however, found meaning in their research and presentations.

Elise Wilson, a sophomore at Sumner High School, did her project on Holistic Cancer Prevention and injected plants with tumor-inducing chemicals and studied how they reacted to various treatments.

“This project was very personal to me, because I know two people who beat cancer – my grandma and my mom’s friend,” said Wilson. “Everyone, everywhere knows someone who has been diagnosed with cancer and I wanted to do something to highlight different treatments that can help treat it.”