March was STEAM Month at Mason-Rice Elementary School, much of it concentrated into a very successful STEAM Week that brought 65 parent volunteers into classrooms for interactive presentations and hands-on activities in areas as diverse as human respiration, robots and artificial intelligence, the chemicals in nail polish, and the physics of sound from a violin. This year, they added a STEAM Playground of hands-on activities, which included:

• Creating electronic circuits with Fab Foundation
• Programming robots with KIBO and Root Robotics
• Working in teams to solve engineering challenges with Destination Imagination
• Learning about the effects of UV rays from the newly opened Newton Free Library Makerspace,
• Running digital relay races with Splats
• Meeting robots in a robot petting zoo with Joe Francazio and robots from Empow Studios.