Along with our writer's workshop, book clubs, and math class, we are excited to provide new STEM courses that your learners are going to love! We group the incoming 2nd and 3rd grade students to best match their maturity, their interests, and their abilities in math and ELA. This also gives the 3rd grade students a chance to show some leadership with the younger learners.This summer we are planning learning around biology, pollution, the ocean, engineering, and physics. At registration you will be asked to rank the STEM sessions, which helps us to plan for learning that is most exciting to our learners. See the options below to learn more about what we have to offer at Experience Academy. 

Did you know cactuses used to be leafy? They only grew spikes when they needed to adapt to a harsh environment. Ducks have webbed feet to be able to swim better in water. The chameleon is the master of camouflage.  In this session we will start to explore changes that are happening around us. The younger learners are going to get started with biology as they study the world around them in the Outdoor Adventurers study. This session will build off of that study and add some depth and rigor to meet the needs of the older students. For the culminating project, students will start to hypothesize about how plants and animals will continue to adapt as time continues. 

We have had many students with a passion for correcting pollution. In this session, we will start to look at the world around us and ask questions about the pollution that exists. What is pollution?  Are there different types of pollution? What are the effects of pollution in our environment? Is there a way to reverse the effects of pollution? Is there more to pollution than just the trash on the ground? Within this session we will start to identify systems and/or devices that can help us to clean up the world around us.

Did you know that the ocean occupies approximately 71% of the Earth? And that more than 90% of the Earth's species are aquatic? In this session we will start to explore the ocean – the animals, the plants, and the massive space it entails. Within this session, we will study the ocean's many benefits. We learn about pollution -- how the ocean becomes polluted and what happens because of the pollution. We will also dive into the polar ice caps and their affect on everything ocean related.

There are over 2 million engineers in the United States alone! In this session, we will be exploring different engineering processes. Within a study of bridges, we will start to use the science and engineering practices to help us develop hypotheses, test our hypotheses, and build a bridge. Our goal is to achieve the highest structural efficiency -- a bridge that is very lightweight and capable of holding the most possible weight. This is a challenge commonly used in Science Olympiad competitions and we are excited to bring it to our learners! 

Physics offers so many explanations for the things happening around us. In this session we will start to identify and experiment with properties of physics. In this session we will be creating a barbie bungee jumping simulation, allowing us to learn about collisions, force, motion, speed, velocity, elasticity, and more! We will also dive into a study of roller coasters, which will enforce the properties of motion, while giving us a different vantage point for the study of force and motion.