Health and Biomedical Science for a Diverse Community includes special events for families: Family Science Nights and Family Festivals.
Family Science Nights
Family Science Nights are held each year at Hoover and Fruitvale Elementary Schools. These events target the families of the 4th and 5th grade students, introduce parents to the curriculum, and invite families to engage in health and science activities together. The activity stations offer the students a preview of the coming lessons. Some of the stations duplicate classroom activities and demonstrations, while others cover the unit themes with new activities. Family members get paper passports so that they can keep track of their progress around the activity stations. At each station they collect stickers. At the end, if they have collected all of the stickers, they can choose a prize.
The 2005 Family Science Nights featured the following activity stations:
1.) The Human Body: Families assembled and disassembled a plastic torso with removable organs.
2.) Serving Size: Families tested their knowledge of serving sizes for various food groups.
3.) Energy Balance: Weights of various sizes bear the names and caloric content of common foods and activities. Families tried to balance food choices and exercise choices on a plastic scale.
4.) Sugar: Families sorted cereal boxes or beverages and ordered them in a line according to the amount of sugar or vitamins they contained.
5.) Asthma: Families read an interactive storybook about asthma from LeapFrog Enterprises, and they tested their lungs with peak flow meters.
6.) Lungs: Families watched a demonstration of a real pig lung that inflated and deflated. Students were challenged to name the parts of the respiratory system.
7.)Brain: Families examined real animal brains and tested their own reaction times. They took a quiz to see if they were right brained or left brained.
8.) Diabetes: Families tested fake blood samples with glucometers and fake urine samples with test strips to determine if a patient was diabetic.
Family Festival
A culturally appropriate family festival is held annually for Fruitvale and Hoover families with k-5 students. The 2005 Festival, held at the Hall of Health, was developed by the Explorit! Science Center in Sacramento and was entitled Health in Your World. The content was tailored to meet the linguistic needs of English language learners. Familes could view the effect of tobacco on human lungs, see how much sugar goes into a 2-liter bottle of soda, and learn how a healthy heart works. They could explore the human body, fitness, environmental questions, and more through interactive experiments designed to make learning about health and safety fun. In 2006, a family festival developed by the staff of Health and Biomedical Science for a Diverse Community will be held at each school.
