LIMA, Ohio (WLIO) – The City of Lima’s Summer Playground Program hit the road Wednesday morning with a visit to the Ohio State Lima campus, giving children the chance to explore science, creativity, and a bit of college life.
The kids rotated through four different activity stations during their visit. They shared their dreams for the future and created posters to take home, played Buckeye Bingo, enjoyed outdoor fun on the quad, and capped off the trip with a hands-on science lesson. The educational component focused on prehistoric life and fossils, including a closer look at Ohio’s official state fossil—the Isotelus, a large trilobite.
“This is an opportunity at these different ages to get them interested in science and hopefully keep that,” said Mark Kleffner, associate dean at OSU Lima and professor of earth sciences. “They’ll see it’s fun, and that’s one of the things I really enjoy so much as a teacher—turning students on to a subject that many people think is not a fun subject when it actually is.”
To bring the lesson home—literally—each child got to take a fossil of their own as a keepsake. Ohio designated the Isotelus as the state’s invertebrate fossil in 1985.
