Youngsters in Peters Township build bridges to education
With a lesson that involves the likes of gumdrops and marshmallows, the youngsters had an obvious question: When do we eat?

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Lorelei Wallace works on building her bridge.
But the students at Goddard School for Early Childhood Development in Peters Township were content to wait as they used the goodies for their intended purpose: building bridges.
Plastic cups, straws, Q-tips, pipe cleaners, rubber bands and dried spaghetti noodles also served as construction materials as the children wrapped up a week of learning all about bridges in a special project to advance their understanding of STEAM, the subjects of science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.
Goddard schools nationally participated in a STEAM education initiative recently, and because Pittsburgh boasts more bridges than any other city in the world – 446, according to the Senator John Heinz History Center – learning about them seemed like a natural for the schools in this region.

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Scarlett Donoghue and Oskar DiIulio examine their creation.
“I think it’s nice that we were able to incorporate the bridges in Pittsburgh,” kindergarten teacher April Ramsey said. “The students thought that was really cool, and it was good for me to show them images of Pittsburgh and for them to relate to real-life experiences.”
For example:
“They might hear that their parents get stuck on traffic on the Liberty Bridge, and they’re like, ‘Oh, I know that one!'”
Haylee Larimer, director at the Peters Township school, explained some of the concepts students learned as they apply to STEAM education.
“One day, they were shown a picture of a suspension bridge and they had to count the suspension cables, so that incorporated math,” she said. “For art, they got to design their own bridges and draw them. And for science, they learned about the different materials that they can use to build bridges.”

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Abby Daly and George Dethlefsen
For kindergartners, the technology aspect may have been the most interesting. They used Sphero, a small – globe-shaped, as you may have guessed -robot to test the strength of bridges by rolling across them.
Younger children got in on the action, too.
“The infants used foam blocks to build bridges,” Larimer explained. “The toddlers have a big river that they made and then they use different material to build a bridge, and we’re talking about how they would cross the bridge and it would need to be strong enough that they don’t fall in the water.”
What they learn now can help them far into the future.
“I think exposing both boys and girls to technical fields at an early age will draw their interest into those fields as they progress, age-wise and academically,” Robert Santo said. He and his wife, Lori, are on-site owners of the Goddard schools in Peters and Upper St. Clair.

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Colton Neary seems to be enjoying the project.
“A lot of the science fields are underrepresented by U.S. citizens, and we’re having to bring people in on green cards and visas to fill them,” he explained. “And a lot of them are high-paying jobs. So we’re trying to get children interested in these technical fields in hopes that it draws their interest into areas where they can really do well for themselves.”
The youngsters assembled their bridges both individually and as part of teams.
“I think it’s important for them to be able to work socially in groups and to get along,” Ramsey said. “One day, it wasn’t their best when they were working in groups. The next day, they turned it around, and I was so proud of them.”
Along with the educational component, she said, came another bonus for the children:
“They had a lot of fun, because it’s something that we don’t get to do every day. They did really well, and they surpassed my expectations.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac
From left are Arista Thakur, Leah Logue, Wesley Noel, Faye Kirstein and Matthew Milliron.