Upcoming Events
Another school year is coming……..
Past Events
23 May 2024
The 2024 Flathead Valley Rocket Rally (8th annual) is an amazing event that emphasizes engineering, science, and math with 8th graders across the Flathead Valley. Adding the competition to the learning and building – that’s just even better. This year was a great success with unexpected wonderful weather! We were expecting a chilly day with rain most of the day, but the clouds went away, we had quite a bit of sunshine, warm temps, and light breezes – amazing! We had 11 school districts that participated in the program: Bigfork, Cayuse Prairie, Deer Park, Evergreen, Fair-Mont-Egan, Helena Flats, Kalispell, Kila, Smith Valley, Stillwater Christian, and West Valley middle schools. This year Olney-Bissel had a schedule conflict and could not attend the Rocket Rally. This program reached over 700 8th grade students, with just over 200 students competing at the Rocket Rally!
60 teams from the schools competed in the 5 categories: Highest Altitude, Best Rocket Design, Best Homemade Parachute and Deployment, Best Logo, and Raw Egg Survival. Once again, we had amazing judges – science students from both Glacier and Flathead high schools. The judges did a great job whether they were spotting rocket altitudes, looking at parachute deployments, or logos, and all other aspects of judging.
We had a number of nice launches that went over 200 feet high and West Valley School set a new Rocket Rally altitude record with a high altitude of 361 feet! There were some very impressive homemade parachutes that deployed beautifully and brought the rockets down for soft landings. We also had some amazing flights that did not quite fly as planned, along with some pretty fast and hard landing lawn darts. This year we had many teams that struggled with getting parachutes to deploy. Much of that is due to excessive duck tape, or sticky clay (used for ballast) making it difficult to get those pesky nose cones to come off to deploy the parachutes. There were some great launches that kept the raw eggs safe (simulates our astronauts), but we also had multiple launches where the eggs were not quite secured and the eggs came flying out of the rocket during flight, each to a terrible demise – always a crowd pleaser. We even had one air-to-surface missile that tried to take out the students at Kalispell Middle School and left quite a mess of their picnic blankets as the egg yolk splattered on impact!
Everyone had a great time – the spectacular flights are as fun to watch as the flights that didn’t quite go as well – and the cheers and applause from the audience, when rockets seem to home in on a judge or audience member – heads up!
Winners of the 8th Annual Flathead Valley Rocket Rally are:
Best Logo
1st Cayuse Prairie: Diving Ducks
2nd Kila: Bad Intentions
3rd Bigfork: Cheesy Triplets
Parachute Deployment
1st West Valley: Northern Slayer
2nd Cayuse Prairie: Gru's Crew
3rd Evergreen: Soaring Fish
Rocket Design
1st Cayuse Prairie: Gru's Crew
2nd Evergreen: Freedom Fighters
3rd Fair-Mont-Egan: The Purple Prickly Pears
Altitude
1st West Valley: Northern Slayer 361.0 ft (New Record!)
2nd Bigfork: Space Monkeys 288.3 ft
3rd Stillwater: The Guinea Pigs 270.5 ft
Egg Survival
1st West Valley: Northern Slayer 213.0 ft
2nd Fair-Mont-Egan: The Midnight Sun 201.7 ft
3rd Kalispell Middle: Sleepy Geniuses 194.3 ft
As always, we could not smoothly run this event without out AMAZING high school judges, volunteers, and sponsors!
A HUGE Thank You to all of the volunteers that helped set-up and keep the event running smoothly, with a special shout-out to our friends from Applied Materials who took the day off from work to be our Launch Pad Supervisors!
A HUGE Thank You to our student judges from the physics class at Glacier High School and the physics class and Science Club students from Flathead High School – They are amazing and great at judging all the categories.
A HUGE Thank You to all of our sponsors and partner, Two Bear Capital, that helped make this program and event possible!!! Please check out our sponsors page to see all our sponsors!
19 May 2024
The Flathead STEAM Alliance sponsors the Power Your Future (previously called Expand Your Horizons) event held annually at the Flathead Valley Community College. This event has over 30 workshops for over 400 middle grade school girls from over 20 schools from Northwest Montana. 48 lucky students are selected (randomly) to attend the “Rocket Mission” workshop given by our president, Alison Godfrey. This is quite a fast pace workshop, more like controlled chaos, as 4 pairs of girls build water bottle rockets (our rocket engineers), 1 pair of girls builds an altitude finder and altitude calculator (our system engineers setting mission requirements), and 1 pair of girls build a launch pad (our ground support engineers), all in 50 minutes! And that includes a brief talk of Alison’s role as a technical lead for building rockets, the many types of engineers and scientists that are needed to build rockets (and basically building anything), and how we work as individuals and teams to make our missions happen. And then – here’s what each of you will be going – GO! Luckily, the workshop was given 3 wonderful volunteers that helped keep the girls moving in building the rockets and altitude tools while Alison provided guidance in building the launch pad. Once the girls completed the launch pad, Alison and the two girls would go outside early to calibrate the launcher to make sure it was ready for the finished rockets. Luckily the weather was great for our rocket launches – no rockets blown into trees or on top of roofs 😊. We had some great launches that went high and parachutes deployed, and some unfortunate rockets that showed a few workmanship issues (fins ripping off on launch) – each is fun to watch. Our system engineers do a great job working as a team to report the altitudes of each launch. The girls literally have a blast in this workshop and each are happy with the overall results, and some even learn how to use a few new tools. Hopefully they walk away knowing that science and engineering is just as fun in real life as it was in this amazing workshop and pursue this in school and beyond.
25 MAY 2023
The 2023 Flathead Valley Rocket Rally (7th annual) was a great success with typical Montana springtime weather – a brisk north wind, quite humid with the threat of possible rain, and pretty chilly out. We had 12 school districts that participated in the program: Bigfork, Cayuse Prairie, Deer Park, Evergreen, Fair-Mont-Egan, Helena Flats, Kalispell, Kila, Olney-Bissel, Smith Valley, Stillwater Christian, and West Valley middle schools. This year there were no schedule conflicts and all 12 schools competed at the Rocket Rally. This program reached over 740 8th grade students, with just over 260 students competing at the Rocket Rally!
70 teams from the schools competed in the 5 categories: Highest Altitude, Best Rocket Design, Best Homemade Parachute and Deployment, Best Logo, and Raw Egg Survival. Once again, we had amazing judges – science students from both Glacier and Flathead high schools. The judges did a great job whether they were spotting rocket altitudes, looking at parachute deployments, or logos, and all other aspects of judging.
We had a number of nice launches that went over 200 feet high. There were some impressive homemade parachutes that deployed and brought the rockets down for soft landings, unfortunately most were due to the nose cone coming off too soon, which made for a low altitude score. We also had some amazing flights that did not quite fly as planned, along with some pretty fast and hard landing lawn darts. This year we had many teams that struggled with getting parachutes to deploy. The extra humidity in the air, along with excess duck tape, made it difficult to get those pesky nose cones to come off to deploy the parachutes. There were some great launches that kept the raw eggs safe (simulates our astronauts), but we also had multiple launches where the eggs were not quite secured and the eggs came flying out of the rocket during flight, each to a terrible demise – always a crowd pleaser as some of the eggs were launched right at spectators!
Everyone had a great time – the spectacular flights are as fun to watch as the flights that didn’t quite go as well – and the cheers and applause from the audience, when rockets seem to home in on a judge or audience member – heads up!
Please see the article from the Daily Interlake at: Rocket project aims to launch students’ interest in science | Daily Inter Lake
Winners of the 7th Annual Flathead Valley Rocket Rally are:
Best Logo
1st: Cayuse Prairie – Fancy Flying Flamingos
2nd: Helena Flats – Humming Bees
3rd: Kila – Duck-O-Nauts
Parachute Design/Deployment
1st: Cayuse Prairie – Sleighful Santas
2nd: West Valley – Himalayan Hibiscus
3rd: Smith Valley – Blueberry Muffins
Rocket Design
1st: Cayuse Prairie – The Fruit Loops
2nd: Cayuse Prairie – The Patriots
3rd: Smith Valley – Pink Flames
Highest Altitude
1st: Kalispell Middle School – Surf’s Up 235’
2nd: Deer Park – FCF 209’
3rd: West Valley – Misfits 195’
Egg Survival
1st: Stillwater Christian School – Stillwater Rocketeers
2nd: Cayuse Prairie – Silver Bullet
3rd: Kalispell Middle School – Surf’s Up
A HUGE Thank You to all of our sponsors that helped make this program and event possible!!! Please check out our sponsors page to see all our sponsors!
A HUGE Thank You to all of the volunteers that helped set-up and keep the event running smoothly, with a special shout-out to our friends from Applied Materials who took the day off from work to be our Launch Pad Supervisors!
A HUGE Thank You to our student judges from the physics class at Glacier High School and the Science Club students from Flathead High School – They are amazing and great at judging all the categories and getting the altitudes for each launch.
June - August 2022
STEM for Flathead Valley Schools conducted a very successful series of STEM activities at the Iron Horse summer camp for campers in grades 4 - 8. The activities included investigating the 4 states of matter, elements of astronomy, shocking experiments with electrostatics (static electricity & lightning), and the always a favorite rocket science featuring the design, building, and launching of cannister, stomp, and water bottle rockets.
MAY 2022
26 May - Flathead Valley Rocket Rally at Glacier High School
The 2022 Flathead Valley Rocket Rally (6th annual) was a great success with perfect rocket weather. We had 11 school districts that participated in the program: Bigfork, Cayuse Prairie, Deer Park, Evergreen, Fair-Mont-Egan, Helena Flats, Kalispell, Kila, Olney-Bissel, Smith Valley, and West Valley middle schools. Unfortunately, Evergreen and Olney-Bissel had a schedule conflict so could not attend the Rocket Rally itself. This program reached over 400 8th grade students, with just over 200 students competing at the Rocket Rally.
53 teams from the schools competed in the 5 categories: Highest Altitude, Best Rocket Design, Best Homemade Parachute and Deployment, Best Logo, and Raw Egg Survival. Once again, we had amazing judges – science students from both Glacier and Flathead high schools. They all did a great job whether they were spotting rocket altitudes or looking at parachute deployments, or logos, and all other aspects of judging.
We had some beautiful launches that went over 200 feet high with some impressive homemade parachutes that deployed at the right time and brought the rockets down for soft landings. We also had some amazing flights that did not quite fly as planned, along with some pretty fast and hard landing lawn darts. There were some great launches that kept the raw eggs safe (simulates our astronauts) – and some pretty gross egg splats – a few even close to some audience members, but no one got egg on their face 😊
Everyone had a great time – the spectacular flights are as fun to watch as the flights that didn’t quite go as well – and the cheers and applause from the audience, when rockets seem to home in on a judge or audience member – heads up!
Rocket Rally photos published by the Daily Inter Lake newspaper (each is a link to a photo): Daily Inter Lake Daily Inter Lake Daily Inter Lake Daily Inter Lake
Winners of the 6th Annual Flathead Valley Rocket Rally are:
Highest Altitude
1st Place: WVS - Around the World: 215 ft
2nd Place: KMS - The Narwhals: 214 ft
3rd Place: WVS - Heavy Lifters: 205 ft
Best Rocket Design
1st Place: KMS - Raloo Rockets
2nd Place: SV - Chicken Nuggers
3rd Place: BF - Greek Gods
Best Homemade Parachute and Deployment
1st Place: WVS - Wet Bandits
2nd Place: HF – Rocketavias
3rd Place: SV - Homer Flo
Best Logo
1st Place: KMS – Pluto’s Gravity
2nd Place: BF – The 4 Rocketters
3rd Place: KMS - Raloo Rockets
Raw Egg Survival
1st Place: DP - Whistle Missiles
2nd Place: KMS - M & E Rockets
3rd Place: KMS - Raloo Rockets
MAY 2021
27 May - Flathead Valley Rocket Rally at Glacier High School
The 2021 Flathead Valley Rocket Rally (5th annual) was a great success with perfect weather. We had 8 school districts that participated in the program: Cayuse Prairie, Deer Park, Fair-Mont-Egan, Helena Flats, KMS, Kila, Smith Valley, and West Valley schools. Unfortunately, Kila had a schedule conflict so could not attend the Rally itself.
42 teams from the schools competed in the 5 categories: Highest Altitude, Best Rocket Design, Best Homemade Parachute and Deployment, Best Logo, and Raw Egg Survival. We had amazing judges – science students from both Glacier and Flathead high schools. They all did a great job whether they were spotting rocket altitudes or looking at parachute deployments, or logos – all other aspects of judging.
18 May - Pint Night at Sacred Waters
The evening was a great success with a sellout crowd. Our BINGO calling was enjoyed by all. We generated over $400 in funds for SFVS and made some new contacts for class guest speakers by a couple of retired engineers.
18 May - STEM for Flathead Valley Schools radio interview on KGEZ (600 AM, 96.5 FM)
We had a great half hour interview with the morning show hosts that allowed us to promote our programs and discuss some of our successes. We especially highlighted the upcoming Rocket Rally at Glacier High School. We even were heard by a software engineer who is now a volunteer with us and has put together a new computer programming curriculum that is being tested with Kila 8th graders.
18 May - Expanding Your Horizons Middle school girls STEM event
May 2019
Fourth annual Flthead Valley Rocket Rally Takes Flight
Eighth-graders from around valley participated in fourth annual event, which teaches students aerospace and rocketry fundamentals.
Flathead Beacon / Read Full Article
1 March,2018
Pop rockets take flight at the Flathead County Science Fair held at the Flathead County Fairgrounds Expo building. Schools from across the county came to show their students science expertise. The STEM for Flathead Valley Schools non-profit set up a physics of flight and rockets discovery area for all attendees to learn and have fun.
Daily Interlake/Read Full Article
26 May,2016
Newspaper photos of the Flathead Valley Rocket Rally.
Daily Interlake 1/Read Full Article Daily Interlake 2/Read Full Article
7 December,2016
“Software expert had career in rocket science”
An article about the founder of the Flathead Valley Rocket Rally and co-founder of the STEM for Flathead Valley Schools non-profit.
Daily Interlake/ Read Full Article
19 May, 2015
“Girls rule at special workshops”
The purpose of Expanding Your Horizons is to encourage and motivate young girls to pursue science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects through hands-on workshops led by volunteers with professional experience. Some of the girls launched bottle rockets under the guidance of Alison Godfrey, a retired engineer for Lockheed Martin.
Daily Interlake/Read Full Article