KINGSTON — The best elementary science athletes from the far reaches of the North Kitsap School District converged at Kingston Junior High School Tuesday for the 22nd annual North Kitsap Science Olympics.

After stepping onto the champions podium in their respective classrooms earlier in the month, delegates from each elementary school in the district came to make a claim for pride in their scientific specialties.

“It’s intuitive to them. It’s play,” event co-organizer Peggy Bullock said. “They are learning the scientific method, and they don’t even necessarily know that.”

Regardless of their awareness of the elementary academics involved in the games, the students isolated variables in the quest to solve problems, she added.

Kindergartners exercised the scientific function of hypothesizing in a competition called Sink or Float, in which students guess which objects are capable of floating.

First graders constructed aluminum foil boats in an event called Boat Float which tested the handmade maritime vehicles under the weight of metal washer cargo.

New to the games this year was the second-grade Paper Rockets competition.

Contestants created paper rockets and propelled them using air-power through a straw. The newest event to the Olympics was a big hit with students.

“The enjoyment that the kids have, how proud they are, the size of their smile and the way they look over at their parents when they see how they’ve done, that’s really the critical piece that keeps me wanting to volunteer as a judge,” said NKSD director of curriculum and assessment Wally Lis, who has helped judge the third-grade competition for the past few years.

The third grade Olympians built two-wheeled vehicles with pencil axles and paper plate wheels while fourth graders built paper catapults which they used to launch marshmallows.

The fifth and sixth graders donned their construction hats as the fifth-grade competition tested skills of building straw bridges, while the sixth graders built and tested straw structures.

“This event is so fantastic because kids are really having fun with science,” said NKSD executive director of teaching and learning Marylou Murphy. “For the kids who win, it was as if they had won an Emmy.”

All students in the competition received a participatory ribbon while the first, second and third place winners received blue, red and white ribbons for their accomplishments. And even bigger than any award, students learned how to put the scientific method to use in a real world setting.

“This is the open door into the hands-on science for the school year,” Bullock said.w