BOAST Kids Newletter
Spring 1999

In the last few years, it has become a tradition to take the participants of the BOAST Academy to the UIUC Engineering and Agricultural Open Houses. This year thirteen children participated in this tradition.

Since the theme of the BOAST Academy during the semester was "Simple Machines, the participants and volunteers looked for examples of simple machines at the open houses.

The following articles and drawings about the open houses were written by the participants and volunteers.

I tried the "Drunk Driving Simulator" at Engineering Open House. The purpose of the simulator is to show what it is like to drive when you are drunk. The simulator is generated by a computer and has a steering wheel.

I saw a "Red Seeking Robot" at Engineering Open House. The robot follows red objects like my can of "Fruitopia." It is battery powered and has a camera on top of it to follow red objects. It has tires and wheels.

I saw a telescope at the Open House. A telescope lets you see things that are far away. The telescope has magnifying lenses and a lever to make it move.

At the Beckman Institute, I got a yo-yo. I has a string and a round plastic ball. It is like a pulley.

At Agricultural Open House, I saw a tractor. Tractors help with farms. Tractors are run by engines. They have wheels and levers.

At Engineering Open House, I saw many neat things. First I saw the Drunk Driver Computer Simulation. It showed me what it was like to be drunk. It looked dangerous. Next I saw the farm stuff. There I saw a lot of animals, like horses, cows, baby chicks, pigs, sheep, and goats. They gave us milk to drink. They had different flavors, strawberry, chocolate, and plain.

Then I saw a display on hamburgers that showed which ones were juicy and ones that were dry. I saw the dead animals hanging up from big hooks. I was eating when I saw this and it made me feel sick to my stomach.

In this one room, some guy took my picture with an overhead camera. The screen was huge and they made me wear a pair of glasses. It was a game and I had to hit these balls into holes. I think it was called "Gladiators." A picture of my body appeared on the computer screen in 3-D. I looked cool on the screen.

At the end of the day, I went to the robot competition. I liked the robots that were fighting. I think it would be hard to make a robot.

I hope I can go back next year. I went last year and I had fun this year. I want to go back because it was fun and I saw things that I never saw before and things that are for the future.

I saw a Cheeto Maker at Engineering Open House. It mixes ingredients to make Cheetos. The machine has two screws that rotate and bring the corn meal down through the machine. It is very hot. The machine is called an "Extruder."

I saw a "Rain Making" machine at Agricultural Open House. It makes rain come down on plants. The machine uses a computer to make the rain come down. Pipes contain the water. The pipes have holes in them for the water to come out. The pipes are above the plants.

At the Beckman Institute, I saw a computer that shows how your jaw works. It uses a computer to make images of the tongue to show how you talk. Inside the computer is software that makes this machine work. I liked this machine.

When I went to Engineering Open House, I went to the Cave at the Beckman Institute, but it made me very, very dizzy. Then I went to the animal place where I petted all the animals and held the baby pigs. I also held chicks and watched them while they were hatching out of their shells. Some chicks were born, and some were not. I saw this baby chick just hatch from its egg. I'm glad it lived. I'm glad it didn't die. After that I put my hand inside the stomach of a live cow! I took some grass out of its stomach! Then I milked a cow. To milk the cow, you have to pull the udder in rhythm, or the cow will get angry and kick you! We had to catch a bus that was really a van everywhere we went. After the volunteer that was with me left, I went with Jaton and Chavez's mentors to eat.

I saw the robots fight at Engineering Open House, and I saw the baby pigs at Agricultural Open House. I drank milk and ate some hamburgers and hotdogs. I got a yo-yo at the Beckman Institute and went to the Cave there, but it made my dizzy. I heard a band play.

Engineering Open House was fun! I liked watching the car crushing machine there. I liked digging in the cow's stomach at Agricultural Open House.

We got a yo-yo and held baby chicks. We saw baby chicks hatching from their eggs. I got to pretend that I was roping a steer. We saw the racing cars and we raced and Quintrell won the first race. I won the next time. Baby Joe won when we played again. Our group was Quintrell, Baby Joe, Will and Staci. We saw horses and cows too.

At Engineering Open House, we went into the Cave at the Beckman Institute. In the Cave we went into the Crayon House and saw bees flying all around us! We saw a robot there that picked up a piece of candy and gave it to me.

At Agricultural Open House, we dug in a cow's stomach and pulled out green food! We saw a sheep take a "boo-boo." The sheep had different colors on his back. We dug up a plant and some worms. We kept the worms. We milked a cow and got a pen that said, "You milked a cow."

We went to the Engineering Open House on Saturday. We went with Staci and Laycell. The car crushing machine was my favorite thing there. The crusher came down and crushed a car!

We also went to Agricultural Open House. We saw lots of animals including cows, horses and chickens. We also were able to see the forest game. We ate Chinese food.

African Americans and their past and continued contributions to the world are a topic of study at the BOAST Academy. The following articles were written by the BOAST Academy participants.

Life would be different if Lewis Lattimer would not have invented the lightbulb filament because you would not be able to see in the dark. The mailbox was also invented by a Black man.

Black Americans invented many things. I brush my hair every day with a product that was invented by a Black woman, Lydia Newman. Last night I turned on a light. The lightbulb filament was invented by Lewis Lattimer, another Black person. My juice was kept cool by the refrigerator, which was invented by J. Standard, a Black man.

Life would be different if Lewis Lattimer would not have invented the lightbulb filament because you would not be able to see in the dark, so you would not be able to see to do your homework at night. If the refrigerator would not have been invented by a Black man, your food would be hot and get spoiled.

If there were no Black people, we would be cold in the winter because a Black person invented the heater. His name was Frederick Jones.

I wouldn't have a chair or pencil to use at school if Black men had not invented them.

Black people invented real life things that help people in America, and other places. Sarah Boone invented the ironing board. Lewis Lattimer invented the lightbulb filament. Paul Downing invented the mailbox that people use for mail.

If it wasn't for Black people we wouldn't be able to see in the dark because Lewis Lattimer invented the lightbulb filament. Our clothes would be wrinkled if Sarah Boone had not invented the ironing board. Our clothes could not be dried in the dryer if it wasn't for George T. Samon.

Learn more about African-American Inventors on the Web.

Maya Angelou is a very brave woman. When she was little, her parents got divorced and they sent her and her brother Bailey to live with their grandmother and their uncle in Stamps, Arkansas. Later she was raped and she didn't speak for a long time until a lady in the town told her that if she wanted to speak, she should speak about what she felt. Maya Angelou didn't graduate from college, but she still became famous. She did what was important for her to do so she could become famous.

Maya Angelou's given name was Marguerite Johnson. She was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Maya Angleou had one older brother named Bailey Junior. When she was three years old, she and Bailey were sent on a train to their grandmother's house in Stamps, Arkansas. Stamps was a little town with a river and a bridge over it. The river was really really big. Maya Angelou said that Bailey and her went swimming in the summer, and many other of their friends went with them. Maya's grandmother owned a store and was respected by the Black people who lived in Stamps. White children came to the store and called Maya's grandmother, Annie. They didn't call her by a nice name. They called her a bad name. They didn't have any respect for Maya's grandmother. Maya thought that it was very very bad. Then every time any man or woman left the store, Maya's grandmother would call her out and tell her, "Sister, you know that person who just left the store? They were pitiful because they were complaining about life." Maya Angelou knew this speech so well that she could say it along with her grandmother, but if she did, she would get slapped out the front door because her grandmother didn't like back talk. In Stamps, Maya learned to love to read. She went to the library every day. She read all the books she could.

Maya was eight years old when she was raped by her mother's boyfriend. Maya didn't tell anyone about what happened at first because the man, Mr. Freeman, had told her, "If you tell anybody, I will kill Bailey." Bailey knew that something was wrong with Maya, so he kept asking her about what was wrong. Finally Maya told Bailey and he told his grandmother and she had Mr. Freeman arrested. Maya went to court to tell the judge what happened and Mr. Freeman was convicted and sent to jail. After he got out of jail, he was stomped to death. Later someone told Maya that the man who raped her had been killed. Maya thought the man was killed because of her, so she stapped talking. Although people at Maya's school talked about her, she just did what she had to do and left them alone. She let them talk their business and she didn't talk back to them. One day a year later, this lady in the town told Maya that if she wanted to become a speaker when she grew up, she should talk about what she felt. Then Maya started to talk again.

Maya went to San Fransisco in 1940 to live with her mother. She went to Mission High School there and graduated in 1945. Later that year, Maya had a son name Clyde, otherwise know as "Guy." In 1952 Maya married Tosh Angelos. Maya and Tosh got divorced soon after they were married and Maya went to work as a dancer and a bar girl to support her son. Soon she got a job as a dancer in the play, "Porgy and Bess," and she got to tour all around the world.

After Maya stopped working for Porgy and Bess, she moved to New York with her son. In New York, she was a singer at the Apollo theater and a writer at the Harlem Literary Guild. She wrote the play, "Cabaret for Freedom," and legally changed her name to Maya Angelou.

In 1960 she worked for the civil rights struggle with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and met Vusumzi Make from South Africa. She married Vusumzi Make and moved to Cairo Egypt with Guy. In Egypt, she took a job as an editor for the Arab Observer. She divorced Make in 1963 and moved to Ghana where she worked at the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana and was an editor for the African Review.

Maya's first book came out in 1970. The book was called I Know Why the Caged Bird sings and it was about her life. Maya was a poet also and wrote several books of poetry. In 1993, she wrote the poem, "On the Pulse of Morning" which she read at President Clinton's inauguration. Maya was given a college diplome by Wake Forest University in North Carolina. She also was nominated for an Emmy Award for her acting in "Roots" and "Georgia, Georgia." In 1971 she was the first African-American woman to have an original screenplay produced.

I didn't know very much about Maya before I started to study about her. I thought I would like her because I learned that she never gave up. She taught me that it is important to keep trying and never give up. She also taught me never to let people put you down, just stay up!

Learn more about Maya Angelou on the Web.

Harriet Tubman was born a slave. Later she became part of the Underground Railroad. She worked to free slaves during the Civil War.

Harriet Tubman was a slave. Her master hit her in the head because she ran away. Harriet Tubman died when she got pneumonia.

I learned that Harriet Tubman was a slave and she was hit with a whip and that hurt her really bad. She was born in Dorchester, Maryland in 1820. In 1844, she married a free Black man named John Tubman. Then Harriet led people who were slaves to freedom.

This is about Harriet Tubman. When Harriet was 5 years old, she went to work watching babies. Later, Harriet made a quilt. The quilt showed how to follow the North Star to escape from slavery. White people did not know that the quilt was really a map to freedom. Harriet led over 300 slaves to freedom.

This is about Harriet Tubman during the Civil War.

Harriet started working at age 5. Later, she helped free hundreds of slaves.

Harriet Tubman was a very brave woman. Harriet Tubman led slaves on the Underground Railroad to freedom. Harriet Tubman started working when she was five years old. She had to scrub floors and watch babies. Harriet Tubman was born a slave. She rescued 300 people from slavery.

Harriet was a slave. She started working when she was 5 years old. She became very sick and died when she was 93 years old.

Harriet Tubman freed many slaves. She married a free Black man. She died of pneumonia.

Harriet Tubman was born a slave. She escaped from slavery and helped free other slaves. She married a free Black man. Harriet died when she was 93 years old.

Learn more about Harriet Tubman on the Web.

The things that I like about BOAST are that it's a place where I can come and play with my friends and get to learn about things like science and the Internet. I also get to see Ellen because I don't go places like the other kids. I also like to meet the college students. I like to do the experiments and surf the "Net."

The Kenwood Elementary School Fifth Grade Musical, The Wizard of Oz, was held the evening of March 4. Three fifth graders, who participate in the BOAST program were very excited about being "Muchicans" in the plat. The play was excellent! It was videotaped by Kenwood's business partner, Time Warner Inc. The videotape may be shown on one of the local TV stations and be available for purchase at a later date. This is the first time in at least 4 years that children in the BOAST program have participated in the Fifth Grade Play at Kenwood.

Many thanks to Ms. Fisher, the music teacher at Kenwood, for producing the play and helping the children with their costumes!

Two third grade BOAST participants attended the Kenwood Junior Great Books program lead by Carol Slough, a Kenwood parent. The program ran from January to March. Nineteen children in grades 2 - 5 participated in the program once a week after school in the Kenwood library. Each week the children read and discussed a story from their Junior Great Book. The BOAST participants really enjoyed the readings, the discussion and the snack!

Many thanks to Carol and the Kenwood PTA for offering the BOAST participants scholarships and welcoming them into the Junior Great Books Program!

The participants of the after school program continued to have the opportunity to participate in the Pizza Hut Book-it Program during the months of January, February and March. For the Book-it program, each participant had the opportunity to earn one free personal pan pizza a month for meeting his/her reading goals. At the end of the month those participants who had met his/her reading goals were treated to a field trip to Pizza Hut.

• National Science Foundation Education and Human Resources Directorate
• Kenwood Elementary School, Champaign, IL
• UIUC School of Life Sciences Howard Hughes Fellowship Program
• UIUC College of Engineering
• UIUC Science and Technology Center for Superconductivity
• UIUC Microelectronics Laboratory