Day 6 - School Visit

It was an early start to the day, we headed to the University of Nairobi to meet the girls.

We gathered in the boardroom to prepare our presentations. We discussed internships with the UoN girls and also the world of LinkedIn. While preparing we realised that the wire we had for the workshops wasn’t as conductive as we hoped. Michaela & I went on a hunt through the city for a copper wire in time for the school visit. You can literally ask anyone for what you are looking for and they will make sure to find a way.

We took the university minibus to our first school which was Loreto Convent Valley Road.

Entering the primary school the children were so excited to greet us. After the children’s lunch, we split up and took years 6, 7 and 8 to their classrooms to begin our engineering workshops.

We gave a general talk on engineering and the many engineering types there are before giving a detailed talk on a specific discipline followed by a related STEM activity.

Year 6 we had a civil engineering workshop called straw towers. The children were able to learn more about statics and the structure of towers when building the tallest tower possible with a certain amount of straws given.

Year 7 experienced an aeronautical engineering workshop of paper planes. The children were introduced to the basics of aerodynamics, different parts of aircraft and the forces that act on a plane to make it fly. They then got to race their own paper planes, the one that got the furthest won.

Finally, year 8 worked on an electrical engineering workshop of the steady hand game. They learned that in order for current to flow, the circuit has to form a complete or closed loop. So the objective of the game was to not close the circuit because if the wires touch and the circuit is complete, the LED will light up.

All year groups had great fun and had the opportunity to ask us all lots of questions!

We headed home for a relaxing evening after a great day of teaching, reaching over 180 girls!

- Kaitlyn