Children spent time learning how to build planes inside the Mobile Maker Lab at the Morrow County Fair on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023.

HEPPNER — The Morrow County Fair buzzed with activity Friday, Aug. 18, during the Greater Oregon STEM Mobile Maker Lab.

The lab is a mobile classroom with activities and STEM-related tools to teach children the fun and endless possibilities of science, technology, engineering and math.

David Melville, executive director of the GO STEM Hub for Eastern Oregon University, said the lab visited the Umatilla County Fair from Aug. 9-12, then stopped at the Morrow County Fair from Aug. 16-20 in partnership with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry.

The MML prepared several activities for children, the most popular being the water bottle rocket and model-plane building stations. Out of the crowd of kids enjoying the lab, two couldn’t get enough of the former.

“The rocket,” one child said, naming a favorite MML activity. “At first, it didn’t go very high but now it gets really high.”

“Definitely the rocket,” added the child’s older brother. “It’s really fun seeing how high the water bottle can go. Sometimes when it would go up, we would lose track of it in the sky.”

MML In-School Program Manager Tobin Koehn said the intention behind bringing the MML to the fairs was to give kids opportunities and space to try new things and become comfortable with the idea of failing.

“Kids are used to everything being graded and that can make the idea of failing seem scary to them,” he said. “By experimenting and failing with these activities, they can develop the mindset of saying ‘OK, that didn’t work. What else can we try?’ It teaches them problem-solving.”

The MML’s schedule is loaded for the 2023-24 academic year.

According to Eastern Oregon University, the lab will travel to schools in Harney, Umatilla, Grant, Morrow, Baker, Union and Wallowa counties to provide in-person STEM lessons.

For information on the GO STEM MML, call 541-962-3403 or visit go-stem.org.