Gause students celebrate Earth Day with science night

Washougal — Gause Elementary School hosted Family Fun Science on April 22, turning the cafeteria and gym into science labs full of experiments and discovery. Different stations allowed students and parents to experiment with the forces of gravity, build and toss paper airplanes, construct paper skeletons, examine plastic human organs, learn about the ecosystem at Steigerwald Lake National Wildlife Refuge and make Oobleck, a mix of water and cornstarch that acts as a liquid while being poured and as a solid when a force is acting on it. There was also an eruption of Mount Gause, a large model volcano. Wendy Morrill, a learning assistance program teacher, said it was the first Family Science Night Gause has hosted in several years, and that the school wanted to give students a hands-on way to celebrate Earth Day. “I overheard many students saying to their families, ‘Science isn’t as boring as I thought,’ ” Morrill said in a release from the school. “Families were having great conversations about making predictions or explaining why something happened in the activity.”