Canada hosts the Let’s Talk Science Challenge yearly, a team-based competition for Grades 6-8 students. The competition includes an Ultimate Quiz, a Final Engineering Challenge, a Grand Champion, and the Lorna Collins Spirit Award, which recognizes a student’s exceptional spirit, dedication, enthusiasm, and creativity. We are excited to share that Ethan Farmer, a Blessed Carlo Virtual School student, participated in the 2023 Let’s Talk Science Challenge and emerged as the Grand Champion and recipient of the Lorna Collins Spirit Award. Congratulations, Ethan – we are incredibly proud of you!
Blessed Carlo teacher Cynthia Belliveau invited Ethan to join her Grade 6 team despite him only being in Grade 3. Cynthia had previously taught Ethan, introduced him to coding (Minecraft), and started to see that he had the strength to learn more. As she built her relationship with him and his family, Cynthia became aware of his love for science and knew she could feed his desire to learn with this competitive event. Ethan happily discussed high school-level science questions in Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Engineering & Technology, Environmental Sciences, Math, Physics and Space Sciences. He thrived working with the team of three other Grade 6 students, taking turns as captain each week, and he enthusiastically participated as he challenged himself each week to submit a design challenge.
Ethan stood out from the crowd in the final design challenge by creating a magnetic jar to hold and transport extremely fragile minerals sensitive to light, oxygen, and humidity when brought to the surface. The challenge was designing a device to transport these minerals to the research facility safely. Ethan’s innovative solution ensured the minerals remained intact during the journey, making him the challenge winner. Congratulations, Ethan!