IRVINE : Inventive Kids Show Their Stuff

For 6-year-old inventor Ezra Klein, the inspiration came from his baby sister’s spilled ice cream cone.

Why not, he thought, put a frozen piece of plastic around the cone to keep the ice cream cold and catch any wayward drips?

“I call it my ‘Ice Cream Cooler and Melt Stopper,’ ” said Ezra, a first-grader at Irvine’s University Park Elementary School. “With this, my sister won’t spill everything anymore.”

Ezra is one of 234 Orange County kindergarten through eighth-graders participating in the fifth annual Astounding Inventions competition from noon to 3 p.m. today at Irvine Valley College. Admission is free.

“What makes this good for students is that they have to use all of their skills creatively--not just science and math, but they have to write about their project and they have to make an oral presentation to the judges,” said Dorothy Terman, the math and science coordinator for the Irvine Unified School District. “What we want them to do is take a problem in their life and find a practical solution to it.”

And that is what most of the students have done.

Blake Ball, an 8-year-old Turtle Rock Elementary School second-grader, had a problem with spilling the food his mother gave him as she drove him to his after-school activities.

The solution, the Irvine youngster decided, would be to attach Velcro strips to the bottoms of cups and dishes and to the top of a portable table, preventing the containers from sliding off.

“I think this would work great,” he said.

Six-year-old Evan Nutt, a first-grader at Irvine’s Brywood Elementary School, was having trouble falling asleep, so he invented a cartoon lamp shade that would flash favorite characters on the wall.

Sarah Whitehead, 10, invented a straw that could be frozen, eliminating the need for ice.

“My teacher likes to drink Diet Pepsi and she said it doesn’t taste as good when the ice melts,” the University Park fifth-grader said. “So I thought this would be a better version of ice.”

But not all of the inventions would be popular among children. Tasha Vineyard one day forgot to take her homework from school, so she invented a clip to place it in. If the student forgets, an alarm light is activated.