![\"Playing](\"https:\/\/sandiegodowntownnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Graivty-The-Earth-Sucks-225x300.jpg\")
Lori Thomas, from Murrieta, sat outside the merry-go-round arena, awaiting her family\u2019s turn on the wheel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is fun,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cMy daughter is covering this set of events for her science class back home.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the festival is not all about adults. The Fleet Center\u2019s Kid City gave big kids an area for building forts. The adjacent \u201cPower Play\u201d hall provided adult-sized bouncy balls for races among visiting friends to figure out who\u2019s the boss of bouncing around. The Scat Match table laid out plastic versions of animal excrement to pair with their sources to determine who would be the best poop detective.<\/p>\n
Quieter activities brought attendees into areas to learn better jigsaw puzzling skills, roller coaster design, and to best other players with wit and sarcasm in the science edition of Cards Against Humanity.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s multi-day festival was the first-ever venturing into inclusion of arts-related activities and experiences. That transformed the formerly STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) event series into a STEAM festival.<\/p>\n
The festival event series is staged every March. The event series kicked off March 2, with Expo Day at Petco Park, a free daylong exposition targeted toward engaging families with pre-kindergarten through high school children. New features and highlights for 2019 included the Writerz Blok San Diego Live Art, painting surfboards with images from STEAM concepts, and putting science designs to fabric patterns in Fashion Meets Science. Petco Expo Day begins the festival annually, and this year featured over 100 booths, which brought out between 20,000 to 25,000 attendees.<\/p>\n
Over 90 events were on this year\u2019s festival calendar schedule. For the past seven years, the science festival has been the flagship STEM program sponsored by the Biocom Institute. Sara Pagano, managing director of the festival, noted that in 2018, the STEM festival included 65 events, attracted 65,000 participants overall, and brought different events into San Diego County for different communities. Pagano praised the feedback that helped better the 2019 festival of events.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach year, we stretch out more geographically throughout the county,\u201d Pagano said. Pagano brought up the associated STEM in Your Backyard hyperlocal events as part of the festival outreach. \u201cThese events are smaller, and students can spend more time at these sites asking questions and seeking mentorship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn general, the majority of our festival events are free,\u201d Pagano continued, \u201cBecause we believe that access is really important.\u201d The events for 21-plus adults usually have a fee for entry, but Pagano said that 90% of the other activities are open and free of charge.<\/p>\n
Pagano emphasized the importance of the festival on multiple levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love to have kids leave with excitement and a spark for science exploration. We are proud to expose students and their family members to the awe of scientific discovery,\u201d Pagano said. \u201cThis festival is a great catalyst: exposing local residents to the companies and technology enterprises here, as well as the good schools to train students for relevant careers. We are all surrounded by science every day and the festival reminds us of that.\u201d<\/p>\n