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Students oohed and aahed as a clear chemical turned to yellow, giggled as they watched the wavelengths of their singing voices and squealed as they popped balloons.

They were attending Asbury University’s annual Kids’ College, an event for home-schoolers who don’t have the resources to work in science labs like Asbury has.

The college was organized and worked by members of Asbury’s Sigma Zeta club, a group that works with science students around the area.

“We’re a group that focuses on ministering to the students as well as the community,” Sigma Zeta President Josh Spicer, a senior biology major, said. “It used to be a very localized community that we’ve tried to reach out to. As of late, it’s really broadened to Louisville, Lexington, Wilmore and Nicholasville, anywhere we can touch. We’re here to serve, to connect, to build relationships.”

The kids, from kindergarten to eighth grade, participated in projects in the Hamman-Ray building on campus. The three floors were dedicated to three sciences: biology, chemistry and physics.

“We have two labs running at the same time (in each emphasis) because we have so many children that we duplicated everything,” Ann Witherington, a science professor at Asbury, said. “It gives them an opportunity to have labs, which is very, very difficult to do with home school programs.”

The 120 students were the most that the program has ever had. They were split up into seven groups, one being for kindergartners who had a separate curriculum, and rotated from floor to floor learning about the human body, sound and chemical reactions.

“This is the biggest year by far — 60 bigger than any year before,” Spicer said. “Last year was the first year we doubled capacity, and this year we stretched it to the max.”

The “teachers,” members of the Sigma Zeta board and other volunteer Asbury students, showed the kids exciting and interactive science experiments that were geared to show them that it can be fun — as Witherington called it, “organized chaos.”

“The main focus is to teach kids science,” Spicer said. “To make it cool, to make it not above their heads for them to understand. It’s a great showing of the community of Asbury coming together for this global need.”

Spicer said he hopes to see the Kids’ College continue to grow in the future, and he said Sigma Zeta is working toward a science fair next year that will combine public school and home school students.

“It will offer competition in an area that is traditionally very polarized,” he said.

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