By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

Of the four grandparents my granddaughter has, I would probably be the one voted least likely to succeed at fostering a love of STEM. I’ve never encountered a jigsaw puzzle I haven’t run from. And even in my watered-down college bio classes, I never could understand alleles. For me to sell my granddaughter on the benefits of STEM is like asking a pig to teach mah jongg.

Two Tuesdays ago, I took my granddaughter to Genius Gems, where there were no actual gems and, as far as I could tell, only one genius ( of course I mean my granddaughter). It was pouring and I was desperate. She’d already had a manicure.

Lucky for me, Genius Gems is advertised as an incubator for STEM with coding classes for kids ages 2-12.  It sounded like a pretty big step up from Chuck E Cheese where my kids spent way too much of their toddlerhood.  I imagined simulated circuit boards and places for kids of all ages to insert colorful pegs into holes, kind of like a communal game of Lite Brite fueled by math and engineering. It never occurred to me I’d have to help.

It was school vacation week and the place was overrun with toddlers, elementary school kids and moms and dads with babies on their hips. Almost everyone in there could have been my child, except for the 60 or so that could have been my grandchild.

The grandchild I did have was somewhat puzzled about what we were supposed to do.

“See those giant towers those big kids are making? They actually represent things in science,” I said to my granddaughter. “Things like electrons and neutrons and protons .”  Wow, Grandma. Good try. Incidentally I didn’t know if any of this was true. But it sounded good.

Luckily, my granddaughter wasn’t looking for a science teacher but instead more of a hunting and gathering companion. The tower she built never got off the floor. She wanted to collect every purple diamond shape in the immediate vicinity. It was like hunting for truffles.

Not surprisingly, her structure didn’t end up looking anything like the pictures on the instruction cards we had. And unfortunately I was no help. I’m more Flintstone and Rubble than Watson and Crick.

Undeterred by our building debacle, my granddaughter abandoned science in favor of art. At the craft table, she started to make a school banner based on the Harry Potter books. Harry Potter was a clearly a stretch for a 3-year-old. My granddaughter doesn’t even know who Bugs Bunny is.

But seeing how engaged she was, I was ready to declare Genius Gems a success. But then came an unfortunate blip.

My granddaughter was undone by a facsimile of the sorting hat from Harry Potter. Every art room of toddlers and young elementary school kids needs a sorting hat —  apparently that’s the only way to make sure they’re sufficiently spooked when they cut and paste.

Even I was a little scared of the sorting hat. In its slithery disgustingness, it was just tall enough to make a 3-year-old and a 57-year-old squirm, especially when it  began to talk.  It issued its proclamations in a deep, raspy voice, like something that had just come back from the crypt. In the Harry Potter books, the sorting hat organizes kids like Harry and Hermione and Rupert into schools. Here it was just driving kids out of the art room.

“Grandma,” my granddaughter said. “Make that hat go away.” Indeed.

Hoping no one was watching, I took the stupid sorting hat and hid it as far away from the craft table as I possibly could — behind the used glue containers and dried up paint.

Was this STEM? No way.

But while I may be no science teacher, my granddaughter now knows something important about me. I’m a helluva good hat thief.