Future Einsteins and Edisons demonstrated their inventiveness
and creativity at Machado Elementary School
’s annual “Invention Convention.”
Future Einsteins and Edisons demonstrated their inventiveness and creativity at Machado Elementary School’s annual “Invention Convention.”
The 40 first- and second-graders housed at the rural campus spent several weeks learning about the process of inventing before they began their own projects.
“We had to find a way to invent something that would help,” said first-grader Dylan Droudt.
The students pondered a problem that they saw, either in their own lives or the lives of others, and brainstormed a way to solve it.
“I like popsicles, but I just don’t like how they make you sticky,” said Dylan, who said he is “six-and-a-half” years old.
Dylan decided to make a popsicle holder.
Once the problem was identified, and ideas for solving it thought out, the students then kept a log as they worked on the actual invention.
“I had to show them my invention log,” he said. “I wrote what I did so I could remember the things I tried.”
Dylan’s popsicle holder was made using a styrofoam cup with strong toothpicks inserted through the sides of the cup in a crosswise pattern. He took a popsicle from the freezer at his house and demonstrated.
“You put the stick in here,” he said, pushing the popsicle stick down in between the toothpicks. “Then, you eat the popsicle holding the cup, and if it melts and drips, the juice goes into the cup. When it’s done, you can drink the juice.”
Some students found they had to make adjustments as they went along. Several also found they ended up with something different than what they originally visualized.
“Before, I didn’t have as many toothpicks, and it (the popsicle) kind of wobbled,” said Dylan. “So I decided to put more to make it stronger.”
One of the inventions he liked best at the convention, Dylan said, was the “garbage catapult, for shooting your garbage into the garbage can.”
The Invention Convention was the last public event held at Machado Elementary before the 40 students’ last day there on Jan. 31. On Monday, Feb. 3, the first and second graders went to school in two previously unoccupied portables on the Paradise Elementary campus.
The two grades had been in one oversized classroom on the Machado site, with their teachers working together as a team.
Students were moved from the site when the pump for the well on the site failed. The students had been drinking bottled water for a few weeks prior to the failure, because there was soil contamination, and the pump was working sluggishly, but the bathrooms were still functioning.
The re-opening of the school, despite impassioned pleas from parents of the students, is in jeopardy due to the condition of the classroom building, which has been described as being in “an extremely deteriorated state.”
The Machado Heritage Society, dedicated to the preservation of the site and the original schoolhouse, which is over 100 years old, offered to repair the pump to keep students on the site.
During Monday’s School Board meeting, trustees voted unanimously in favor of approving an MOU (memorandum of understanding) between the society and the School District.
In the MOU, the district and the society agree that: the society will repair the well; the district and the society will “work cooperatively” to repair the concrete slab in front of the boys’ restroom; the society will be responsible for maintaining the restrooms; the society will keep a $1 million comprehensive public liability insurance policy; and the district will not be entitled to any money collected by the society from use of the old building.
The society makes the old building available for community meetings, such as scouts and 4-H, and rents it out for birthday parties, weddings and other events.
Closing Machado Elementary was on a consensus list of budget cuts recommended to the School Board for action at its March 10 meeting. Trustees asked that the item be pulled off the list for further discussion.
