Students at Hinsdale`s Monroe Elementary School have won first place in the nationwide Young Astronaut Council competition to design a system for living in space.
The award will be shared by 36 students from 4th, 5th and 6th grade classes who researched and built a biosphere model showing how life can be sustained on the moon or Mars or anywhere else in space.
Some members of the winning group were modest about their success.
”We won`t get first place, no way,” thought Derian Reuss, one of the 6th graders, when they began working on the project.
”It was OK, I didn`t think it was great,” said Allison Jay, a 5th grader who helped build the biosphere.
But judges selected Monroe`s entry from among more than 500 submitted from schools across the nation as the best for 4th, 5th and 6th graders.
”Your Young Astronauts did such an outstanding job, they merit special praise for their superior work,” T. Wendell Butler, council president, wrote in a congratulatory letter to Danette Reihle, teacher-sponsor at Monroe.
”The judges were particularly impressed with the initiative and imagination shown by your chapter members in understanding the Earth`s natural processes and applying them to human settlements and survival in outer space.”
The Monroe youngsters studied books on how life can be sustained, then decided to build a biosphere model showing the interconnecting links between agriculture, rain forest, ocean, marsh, desert, prairie and human habitat.
Each biome, or part of the biosphere, was a hexagon with a 4-foot diameter, showed its role in keeping life going. The children included models of animals, trees, plants and other life forms.
”I hope they have learned how dependent we are on the Earth for our survival,” Reihle said. ”I hope they will take better care of the Earth.”
One of the parent-sponsors, Jarad Smith, said the project ”taught children they could all work together and use their individual talents. They learned scientifically how different life forms could support each other.”
The Young Astronaut program was created in 1984 by the White House Office of Private Sector Initiatives to help increase children`s interest in science and math.
More than 25,000 U.S. schools have Young Astronaut clubs.
For its first-place award, Monroe school received a certificate of excellence and artwork depicting space from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
