The News Dairy

Every class at the elementary school paid a visit to the fair and roughly 80 high school students and 100 community members dropped in as well to check out the work of the young exhibitors.

The event is a hit with students.

“Every year, after the event is over, there are always students who tell me that they are already planning their project for the next year,” Joivell said.

“It’s interesting how there are years where certain topics seem to be more popular,” Joivell said.

The 2024 fair, she said, will go down in history as the year of ‘Chickens Galore’ for the multiple projects fueled by students’ interest in chickens.

Special guests at this year’s science fair included the Huntingdon County Library and Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center, the school’s community science partners.

Felipe Rimmer, Juniata Valley’s STEM lab coordinator, and a team of high school students also joined in the action by demonstrating Sphero Robots.

Joivell said the Juniata Valley science fair is “celebration of science, not a competition.”

“Students let me know their basic ideas about what they’d like to find out more about, then they develop their project over about a month, following simple guidelines as they explore and discover by asking a big question, making predictions, collecting data, and developing a conclusion or possible answer to their big question,” Joivell said.

The Juniata Valley PTO provided gifts to the young participants. This year, every participant received glow-in-the dark slime, a bracelet with the message “I Dared to Be in the Science Fair,” a plastic ocean animal that will grow when placed in water, a science notebook, a science book or magazine and a science journal, along with a certificate of participation.