Supplying all 28 elementary schools in the Kent School District with the tools and materials needed to teach and learn science is a big job, but two programs will again be working to have it covered when classes resume in the fall.

As they did during the recently completed 2007-08 school year, elementary science students will get to explore the physics of levers and pulleys, the behaviors of live insects or the makeup of an owl pellet, they have the district’s Science Materials Resource Center (SMRC) and Transition Outreach Program to thank.

SMRC is responsible for organizing, stocking and distributing about 600 science kits for elementary classes throughout the district. The kits are part of the district’s hands-on elementary science curriculum, in place since 2003, which allows young students to learn through exploration rather than mere text-book reading.

“This is the way that kids remember science best,” said Jeff Barth, curriculum coordinator. “It’s more like real science, too, because they’re actually doing it. Research has shown that if you give the kids a hands-on science lesson first and then they go read about it, it sticks with them much better.”

SMRC is operated by Amy Spies, who organizes all the necessary materials into easy-to-use kits to be distributed across the district.

“We have three different kits per grade level, and they rotate them throughout the year so each class gets to do each kit,” Spies said, adding the kits cover earth science, physical science and life science. “The teachers just put things together and then everything else is up to the kids. They do all the inquiry.”

The kits include materials purchased through vendors, and Spies also grows and tends to many of the living organisms — insects, crawfish, goldfish and plants — also included. But she can’t do it alone. To help her organize science kits and tend to the creatures grown at SMRC, she enlists the help of students in the Transition Outreach Program (TOPs).

TOPs instructs former district students ages 18 to 21 who have some type of developmental disability, aiming to prepare them as contributing members of society with employable skills.

“After high school, we have a lot of kids with developmental disabilities, so we take some of them and help them with the transition into being a member of the community,” said Jim Ewart, para-educator for the program.

The program puts participants in volunteer positions at first, in order to help them acclimate to the responsibilities of being an employee. Ewart said those temporary positions often help boost participants into full-time paying jobs.

Six of the 36 current TOPs students now volunteer at the SMRC with Spies, and Ewart said the collaboration benefits both sides.

“It takes patience and understanding on people like Amy’s part, but she’s also saying, ‘I couldn’t do all this without these guys,’ so it works well for both of us,” he said. “This is terrific for their self-esteem, for their training, to get them used to being at a regular job.”

Kentridge High School graduate Ryan Meyer, 20, a TOPs participant, is one of the six who worked Monday and Wednesday every week to organize science supplies. He said he enjoyed the opportunity.

“It teaches me a lot of responsibility. We get a lot of goals to work on,” he said.