HOUGHTON – With the heavy emphasis on reading and math, science tends to be low on the list of priorities for primary-school teachers, said Houghton Elementary School teacher Emilia Johnson.

So when intense, hands-on science opportunities like Tuesday’s Family Science and Engineering Night come along, she is happy to come back to work after hours.

“It’s great to see these science activities,” said Johnson, who was moonlighting at the school as a parent and learner, helping her son, Owen, dissect an owl pellet – the feathers, bones and other waste an owl spit up after digesting its food. Activities like that and hands-on rock identification, she said, “bring a deeper understanding” than the science units primary-school teachers can fit in.

Joan Chadde, who has organized about a dozen of the science nights at schools across the Copper Country this year, said she knows there are only so many facts her presenters can impart in the 40-minute sessions, so she focuses on activities that will pique students’ interest in learning more on their own.

“My job is not to stuff them with information, but to leave them interested and confident about doing science,” said Chadde, who serves as education coordinator for the event’s sponsor, the Western Upper Peninsula Center for Science, Mathematics & Environmental Education.

Tuesday’s science night included six different activities for K-5 students, with each child and parent taking on two different challenges designed for the child’s grade level. Michigan Tech students and science educators led the activities.

Marcy Erickson of Michigan Tech’s Center for Science & Environmental Outreach is teaching ornithology – the study of birds – to college students this term, but it’s unlikely it can match the younger students’ enthusiasm toward her collection of stuffed owls and the pellets that can prove what they ate.

“They can turn their heads all the way around,” explained Julia Qi, 6, who was equally impressed by the chance to touch the owls’ feathers.

“They’re soft,” she said.

Michael Solena, also 6, was equally impressed by the pellets, which offered hard evidence of what once was on the night hunter’s menu.

“I found two skulls, rat head skulls,” he said. “We get to keep the bones.”