It was raining heavily fortified eggs around the lower Sunshine Coast earlier this month.
The Technology Festival Association of BC (TFABC) hosted its inaugural Egg Drop with three events at Sunshine Coast elementary schools in late November and early December.
More than 450 students from Cedar Grove, Davis Bay and Roberts Creek schools built structures to protect eggs in the name of learning science, technology, engineering and math. Then, firefighters from Gibsons and Sechelt fire departments took the egg structures onto their ladder trucks – and dropped them from 18 metres (60 feet).
Some structures fell to the ground with a resounding splat (meaning the eggs did not survive). For others, children had to wait until they opened their structures in front of the TFABC volunteer judges to determine the state of the eggs.
“It was great to watch the students open up their egg structures to learn whether their egg survived or not,” said Doug Rae, who volunteered at all three drops. “And the excitement, the hoots and hollers and high fives when they found their egg in good condition was quite joyful."
About 20 per cent of the eggs didn’t crack or break and those students had their names entered into a draw for prizes. All participants received certificates celebrating the good learning and “egg-ceptional fun.”
"The egg drop ties nicely to the curriculum and the students have a great experience. It does not get much better than that,” said Signy Bjarnason, organizing teacher at Cedar Grove. “Many thanks to the volunteers at Technology Festival Association and all the firefighters."
"We all had such a fantastic day,” said Seona Dalgleish, organizing teacher at Roberts Creek Elementary. “So much fun to have the big truck and ladder there and I thought the volunteers might have been even more excited than the students."
IGA Gibsons and IGA Wilson Creek donated the eggs and any eggs that survived were given to a local food bank.
