Hundreds of students and families packed the Live Oak High School gymnasium Jan. 24 for the third annual Explore STEAM Fair, a free event designed to make science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics accessible to children of all ages and backgrounds.
The fair drew about 400 attendees and featured 24 participating organizations, including nearly every school in the Morgan Hill Unified School District, according to organizers. Students engaged in hands-on activities ranging from programming and operating robots to launching rockets they built themselves.
“The whole idea was to keep it free, to keep it open to basically the range of kids,” said Susan Hines, organizer of the event and representative of the South Valley Science and Engineering Initiative. “What I wanted to do was to present it in a really fun, non-threatening way to look at the different sciences that would be free, so that it would be open to everyone, and to start young and include the whole family.”
Hines, who comes from a background in chemical engineering, said the fair emerged from concerns about equity in science education. Traditional science fairs and maker events often excluded students whose families lacked time or financial resources, she explained.
“It’s generally the affluent kids that are getting involved,” Hines said of conventional science fairs. “Not all our kids have that support structure.”
The event required all activities to be hands-on and integrate at least one STEAM discipline with another. Organizations received up to $100 per activity through grants written by Hines, with the district fronting some funding this year.
The fair has grown significantly since its 2022 debut at the Morgan Hill Community & Cultural Center. This year’s move to Live Oak High School’s old gymnasium provided more space and better electrical access for the numerous demonstrations requiring power.
Students at the Martin Murphy Computer Club booth worked on programming games in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Li Fang, who founded the club several years ago, said budget cuts had eliminated programming classes once available at the school, and decided to fulfill the need.
“I thought the kids needed an opportunity to learn some programming, especially being in the valley,” Fang said. “Because of the budget cuts, the programming classes that were available when my kids went to Murphy disappeared.”
The club’s demonstration gave visitors the opportunity to play simple video games designed by club members, including Snake, Connect Four and Breakout, as well as giving them a peek at the annotated code behind the game.
Subjects leaned heavily toward tech, with multiple clubs demonstrating robots and programming, including Ann Sobrato High School’s “Future Engineers” club demonstrating how to use microcontrollers to control LEDs and servos, and robots programmed by students from Britton Middle School and Live Oak High School’s Nuts and Bolts club.
Other demonstrations included a workshop to build a DNA structure from candy and toothpicks led by teachers from the Jackson Academy of Math and Music, and a City of Morgan Hill booth featuring a vermicomposting demonstration complete with live worms for kids to handle while learning about municipal waste disposal.
Hines emphasized the importance of student-led teaching.
“We want to get the children really teaching other children because that’s how they both learn,” Hines said. “Otherwise it’s just like school on a Saturday.”
The fair was supported by about 170 volunteers, including members of the Morgan Hill Kiwanis Club who served as volunteer coordinators. The increased volunteer support represented a significant jump from previous years.
Hines said rocket launches consistently produce memorable moments, with young children’s faces showing amazement when their creations fly.
“They just cannot believe that it flew that far,” she said. “Those are just like the most precious pictures of the kids’ faces.”
The event’s activities were designed to accommodate all ages and skill levels, from toddlers to adults. Hines said the goal was ensuring activities weren’t intimidating while still offering challenges.
“A child can look at one and say, ‘I can do that next year,’” she said. “It’s not like ‘I can’t do this at all,’ it’s like ‘I will be able to do this when I get there.’”
