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Event offers hands-on activities for Hazel Dell Elementary students

By Howard Buck
Published: March 26, 2010, 12:00am

Hazel Dell Elementary School students on Thursday pounded together the sides of wooden birdhouses.

They chowed on freshly made corn tortillas and whipped up some nasty-looking artificial snot. They pried apart electrical equipment, donned firefighting gear, and checked out volcanoes, stars of the universe and microscopic life.

No, this wasn’t an average school day.

The school’s 22nd Annual Enrichment Day was a special treat for more than 400 students, assisted by at least 100 parent and community volunteers.

“A lot of these children don’t have a lot of experience in their home life” working side-by-side with adults on craft or science projects, explained Judy Heath.

The former Hazel Dell school reading specialist has helped organize the event for several years since it was launched by two colleagues, she said. Each year brings a new theme, such as Native Americans, animal life, fables and folklore.

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Thursday’s focus was science. Which explains Heath’s telephone calls to a local minerals group, the Red Cross and others who staged about 30 hands-on sessions that filled nearly every classroom.

“(Students) have lots of hands-on experience with adults. This gives them a fun way to do science,” Heath said.

They did everything from stripping down old stereo speakers and video equipment to whipping up snot/mucus and ear wax — lurid concoctions of glue, borax and food coloring to illustrate the “Gross Science” of yucky, if essential, body secretions.

“Probably a robin, or a blue jay,” third-grader Phoebe Cram, 8, said when asked what bird might fit into her newly minted birdhouse.

Phoebe said she installed birdhouses in a play “hideout” she helped build at home. She didn’t need much help in wielding her hammer to nail together her latest handiwork.

Principal Woody Howard said support for Enrichment Day comes from parent-teacher association and Vancouver School District Foundation funds, plus other local donors.

He also credited a Hazel Dell instructor who had previously contributed her $1,000 Walmart teaching award to the cause.

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