Girl's Engineering Day at University of Texas

We finally did something uber educational.  I registered Beauty for Girl's Engineering Day at UT last fall and the day arrived to see what this was all about.  

The day was beautiful!  This made the wait time tolerable.  This is my only complaint about the event.  It didn't start till 2 p.m.  I wrote it down on my little post event questionnaire, too.  Before the event started Beauty did a lot of this:  

One kind group had set up a trebuchet and was lobbing water balloons.  This was fun and I may have been a little more enthusiastic than Beauty.

Once the event started we were given a list of activities to try and could come and go as we pleased.  Beauty was happy to see what a real college classroom looks like and cut her finger trying to put up the desk top.  Injury!  Hopefully she will not retain that as "College will kill you!"  A quick band-aid and we were back in the game.  

Beauty chose to do a bubble wand making class.  She had to make a bubble wand using a choice of various materials.  After she was happy with her wand she took it outside to test it.

Know why everyone is looking at her?  Because her heart-shaped bubble wand worked.  She blew giant bubbles.  Check.  Next activity.

Her other favorite activity was making a dome out of toothpicks and gumdrops.  This was especially delicious educational.  Beauty received a bag with toothpicks, gumdrops, and instructions for putting it together.  Afterwards, there was a test site to see how it would hold up under earthquake conditions (everyone pound your hands on the table).  

There were some other interesting activities like making a helicopter bunny and making a kazoo that she enjoyed.  After a few hours we were ready to leave to go shopping since we were in the big city.  My most memorable and exciting thing was running into the woman who I had originally talked to about starting homeschooling.  We were both on the fence about it and I had started researching  into it.  I had wanted to give her a book and then hadn't seen her since.  What a nice surprise to see her!

Overall, I liked this event and I hope we will be able to attend next year.  I hope it's earlier in the day, too.  It was well organized and well staffed.  If you have the chance to go to one of these you should.


*This week we've seen huge strides in learning.  Beauty taught herself how to ride her bike!  That's a real win in my book.  She learned how to tell time.  She's 2 weeks into learning subtraction and yesterday she started adding double digit numbers.