Students Celebrate Enrichment Festival With Rocket Launch

VESTAVIA HILLS, AL - Students at Vestavia Hills Elementary East participated in the annual Schoolwide Enrichment Festival recently, and in doing so became "rocket scientists" to an extent.

The week-long event, which was planned and led by Gifted Specialist Angela Hollis, provided basic information related to how rockets work, rocket demonstrations within each classroom with parent volunteer help, and culminated in 43 rocket launches (one for each classroom) on the field behind the school.

“STEM and STEAM are such hot topics and hold the kids’ interest so well," Hollis said. "We can really pack so much learning into these areas when we incorporate something as exciting as watching an actual rocket launch! I knew the kids would truly love this experience and ‘sneaking’ physics and spatial sense in would be easy.”

“Our Schoolwide Enrichment Festival at East provides such a great opportunity for enriching, engaging learning for every one of our students each year,” said East principal Mark Richardson. “Last year Mrs. Hollis did another outstanding job planning this week by creating homemade planetariums in our gym where students could actually recreate constellations, and the year before that we had a robotics festival. The kids love it, and I love the fact that events like this could spark a lifelong interest and possible career choice for each of our kids.”