Westlake Elementary Students Place In Potato Chip Bag Invention Contest

Four fourth graders from Westlake elementary schools took four of the top 10 spots in the Shearer Perfection Student Contest to identify America’s next great inventor.

The contest from Shearer’s Foods Inc., Just Between Friends and the National Museum of Education encourages students in grades four through eight to demonstrate their creativity and ingenuity by creating an invention that incorporates the use of at least one of the Shearer’s brands of chip bags. The p to students from Ohio and the Pittsburgh, Pa., area.

Lydia Choban and Christopher Haddad from Dover, Jessica Barrick from Hilliard and Benjamin Routhier from Bassett are among the 10 semi-finalists.

Christopher created a “Welcome Mat for Dirty Shoes” made out of recycled strips of Shearers chip bags. Lydia created a solar oven that is “safe and eco-friendly” and uses the reflective inside of the chip bags.

Jessica created a “Shearers Designer Potato Chip Dress” for her Barbie dolls that makes a “crinkly noise that a young child would like.” Benjamin created a chip bag kite he calls an “eco-friendly and fun” creation.

Finalists will be announced March 3. The first-place winner will receive $5,000, while the second- and third-place winners will receive $2,500 and $1,000 savings bonds, respectively. The remaining seven semi-finalists will each receive a $50 gift card. There also is an opportunity for the winner to have his or her invention manufactured nationally if it teaches a STEM (science, technology, engineering or mathematics) principle.

“The students worked long and hard developing their ideas, designing the inventions, trying and retrying and writing up a proposal about their work,” said Hilliard and Dover elementary schools WINGS teacher Brandi Killinger.

To see all student inventions visit www.westlake.k12.oh.us/DoverTeachers/Killinger/index_files/Page380.htm. You can find out more about the contest at http://nmoe.org/shearer/index.html. The National Museum of Education, which is helping to judge the inventions, can be found at www.nmoe.org/.