Ice cream in the winter? You bet!

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I scream, you scream, Mandalay Elementary students screamed for ice cream! With various dry and liquid ingredients and mittens in hand, 17 first graders at the Wantagh school gathered in the new STEAM lab on Jan. 29 to make a tasty treat.

With help from their teacher, Cheryl Schwartz, and just a little bit of ice, sugar, salt, half and half and vanilla, the students had fun shaking up the bags, mixing the components and making their very own ice cream.

“The STEAM lab really came into place last year, where we started off with a science-type of room and collected all of the science materials from the teachers and put it in there,” Principal Marie Pisicchio said, adding that there is now a maker-space area with equipment that the community donated, “So we can do those projects and partake in activities.” 

The STEAM Lab — for science, technology, engineering, art and math — first came to Mandalay in 2015, with the idea that students would be able to create projects in a hands-on environment. By following a written recipe, the first graders worked together to make ice cream and learn about the different states of matter.

“This lesson is important because it ties in a math component and also aligns with the curriculum,” Pisicchio said. “They spent a day or two beforehand with measuring cups and rice just to understand how to measure liquids and solids, so once they came in, they felt pretty comfortable in trying to make ice cream.”

For many of the teachers and faculty at the school, working in the STEAM lab has been very beneficial. Many of the science-type lessons have been taught in the lab while incorporating maker-space objects and materials.

“Children learn by doing, and when they’re so actively engaged in their work, the experiences and the learning that comes with it sticks and becomes part of their background knowledge,” Schwartz said. “The STEAM lab is a place where the children are excited to go, motivated to work to complete tasks, a great vehicle for developing interpersonal communication skills and makes coming to school fun.”

The Mandalay faculty looks forward to making ice cream again with other grades and having the project built into the science and math curriculum for next year.

“My favorite part about making the ice cream was listening to the level of excitement in the voices of my students and their absolute delight when they took their first taste of the ice cream they made,” Schwartz added. “When children are engaged and excited, it warms the hearts of their teachers and makes teaching that much more exciting too.”