By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
The sounds of children laughing and playing at FHSU’s Memorial Union grew to a roar Tuesday morning.
The students were encouraged to use recyclables to create their own games and then they were supposed to teach the games to other students during the Young Readers’ Conference at FHSU Tuesday.
The kids laid out paper towel rolls as race tracks, built towers and transformed plastic milk jugs into hungry monsters.
“I think it teaches them to be creative and to give them a little bit of ingenuity — ‘What can I make out of what other people see as junk?’ ” said Sarah Broman, FHSU assistant professor of education of the game-building activity.
The day started with an address from Dr. Tisa Mason, Fort Hays State University president. The students learned the story of William Kamkwamba from the book “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.” Kamkwamba used material gathered from the junkyard to build a windmill to power electrical appliances in his family’s home in Africa.
“Just to get kids thinking about that,” Broman said of Kamkwamba’s story. “Something that might be junk to somebody else could be something wonderful and help them and their careers or whatever down the road.”
Macy Patterson, fifth grader from Russell, described her group’s game.
“We are playing bowling,” she said. “We set up 10 bottles. We get two tries. We put corks in plastic eggs, and then it is basically just like bowling.”
Jonathon Franks and his friend Braxton Parsons, also Russell fifth graders, constructed Diaper Bowling.
These students used paper towel cores for pins and a square diaper box as the ball.
Both of the boys said they liked to read. Parsons said he liked to read the Stick Dog series, which is about a hamburger-hungry pooch.
The students also visited with two authors, visited a bookstore created especially for them and visited the Center of Applied Technology building where they observed paper roller coasters and robot demonstrations.
Carrie Tholstrup, coordinator in the College of Education, said the tour at the Center for Applied Technology allowed students to better understand building materials.
“Our theme is ‘Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,’ so we were excited to have the paper roller coasters because we can show students you can make things out of unusual materials like maybe they wouldn’t have expected to make a roller coaster out of paper,” she said.
“We want to show them the principals of engineering and mathematics and that you can do fun things with those concepts.”