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CANFIELD -- The Canfield Fair is featuring six science, technology, engineering, art and math -- STEAM -- activities this year for children, hosted by Ohio State University Mahoning County Extension educators in the Youth Building, Building 25.
The activities offered Thursday were creating loopy planes, playing with robots and creating bouncy balls, according to Paige Irwin, program assistant for 4-H and the Extension department of agriculture and natural resources.
Irwin said the robots teach the children coding through "color-coded" squares.
"Each square does a different act. Green means go, red means stop and yellow means slow like you would see on a traffic light," she said.
She said the loopy planes and bouncy balls help teach physics through visual aid.
"A loopy plane is (made of) a nonbendable straw, an index card and tape. You cut the index card in thirds and make two loops with them. You make a smaller loop and take two pieces and make a bigger loop and you tape it to the straw and once you do that, you can throw it into the air like you would a paper airplane and it does the same act," she said.
She said the bouncy balls are made with borax, glitter glue and water. The children can take home any items they make during the activities.
Other activities OSU hosts are creating ecobots, balloon boats and Alka-Seltzer rockets.
Kristen Eisenhauer, extension educator for 4-H and OSU Extension department of agriculture and natural resources said that ecobots "were developed to teach kids about environmental science and environmental clean up, so they are a small prototype of something that's used to clean up oil spills."
She said the alka-seltzer rockets teach physics and the balloon boats teach buoyancy.
TJ Wade, 8, participated in the robot activities along with his sister, Amelia Wade. He said that he learned how to match up the colors and taught his sister how to match them as well.
The activities are held daily at 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. and will continue through the final day of the fair on Monday.
Eisenhauer also hosted the youth day ceremony Thursday.
The ceremony awarding the clubs who participated in the flower pot projects, then distributed Jean Craig Service Awards for community service participation, awarding scholarships and finally, crowned the Mahoning County Junior Fair royalty.
This year's king and queen are Joey Devine, 19, and Morganne Evans, 18. Evans spent 13 years as a Girl Scout and Devine was in 4-H for 11 years.