By Tim Leeds
The stars were out at IGA this past week.
As part of the "Explore the store" promotion IGA is conducting, Gary & Leo's Fresh Foods brought in the Star Lab from The Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. Bob Soper conducted tours of the lab Saturday, and fourth-grade classes from the Havre schools have been in yesterday and today.
Laura Malisani said they knew the fourth-graders in town were studying space, so they decided to bring the lab in and incorporate their own space module as part of the IGA promotion.
"It's just something we wanted to do for the community," she said.
Most of the schools brought two fourth-grade classes, so while one group took an about a half-hour tour with Soper, the other participated in "Solar Salad." The students used different sized fruit to compare the different sizes of planets in the solar system.
Malisani said the program was conducted by employees of the store and students at the education department at Montana State University-Northern, who were friends of the employees.
She said they ran five shows Saturday with about 15 people in each. The store had a sign-up sheet for those shows.
The students also brought in projects they had done related to the theme. The various projects were displayed throughout the store, including "Aliens for Breakfast" in the dairy aisle, where students had made their own cereal boxes.
Malisani said they set the Star Lab up Thursday night, with the tours on Saturday and the school field trips yesterday, finishing up with the Devlin Elementary School fourth-grade at 9 a.m. today.
