Making science and technology accessible to kindergarten and elementary school students is the goal of the "La Main à la Pâte" program, in which the Arts et Métiers campuses Arts et Métiers Lilleand Clunyhave been participating for nearly 20 years. This initiative was created by Nobel Prize winner Georges Charpak in 1995. We take a look back at this educational partnership with a first-yearGrande Ecole Program student and the coordinator of the La Main à la Pâte Pilot Center in Mâcon, Saône-et-Loire.
Valeria Meiers, a first-year student in the Grande Ecole Program in Lille, explains science to children.
Passing on her interest in science is what motivated Valeria, a first-year student in the Grande Ecole Program, to get involved.
My group and I work at Desbordes-Valmore elementary school in the Bois Blancs neighborhood of Lille with a second-grade class and another third-grade class, Valeria explains.
The activities of "La main à la pâte" focus on dialogue and scientific questioning by children. For example, this year, engineering students will work with second-grade students from the Desbordes-Valmore school on a robotics project, with equipment provided by the Lille city council, while they will tackle the transmission of movement with third-grade students. The enthusiasm of the Arts et Métiers engineering students Arts et Métiers such that nearly half of the class has gotten involved this year! In addition to the spirit of mutual aid and solidarity that is so important to Arts et Métiers engineering students, this success can also be explained by the dedication of Henri Fresko, who has been the coordinating teacher for the "La Main à la Pâte" program for nearly 20 years on the Lille campus.
Olivier Petit, coordinator of the "La Main à la Pâte" pilot center in Mâcon, Saône-et-Loire,requests the assistance of students from Cluny.
Olivier Petit, then a teacher at Pierreclos, discovered "La main à la pâte" through his educational advisor. She told him about a partnership between the Mâcon Sud district, which his school belongs to, and the Arts et Métiers campus Arts et Métiers Cluny around this educational project.
And to bring the primary school children's imagination to life, engineering students in the Grande Ecole Program at the Arts et Métiers campus Arts et Métiers Cluny have been working hard for more than twentyyears. Michel Bon, an Arts et Métiers teacher, now Arts et Métiers the "la main à pâte" (hands-on) program, which has a dozen students. Arts et Métiers students Arts et Métiers demonstrate ingenuity to overcome all the manufacturing challenges. The models are largelyproduced in the woodworking workshop, which in 2016 was expanded to include a new technical facility covering more than 1,000 m² and a full-scale experimental facade that measures the aging of wood according to its chemical and thermal treatment.
Some creations, such as storage furniture and weather stations, remain in the schools that created them. For other models, the idea is to prevent them from ending up in school cupboards. So the Resource Center located atthe Perrières school in Mâcon is used to store and maintain these models and circulate them among schools in the Saône-et-Loire department, says Olivier Petit, who has been running the pilot center since 2016.
The initiative involves around 100 students.
