By: Kirsten Crum, Project STEAM Co-Chair and Endowment Fund Co-Chair
Project STEAM, the newest community project
for the Junior League of Palo Alto-Mid Peninsula, is the result of a renewed
partnership with Project READ, an organization that fuels the fire of hope
through literacy. Their free community literacy programs provide training to
adults, children and families. Our original partnership with Project READ began
in 2011. Project READ committee members completed an extensive fifteen hours of
training to become literacy tutors and volunteered in the Family Literary
Instructional Center (FLIC) helping students with their homework and reading
skills. As a community project, Project READ was sunset in 2015, but our
relationship with the program director, Kathy Endaya, and her staff remained as
League members continued to volunteer at the FLIC and support their programs
long after the project ended.
Then our League selected a new focus area in
2015: Empowering Girls to be STEAM Leaders of Tomorrow. We soon learned that
Project READ was piloting their own STEAM program and naturally reached out to
partner with them again. The collaboration produced Project STEAM, a series of
workshops and mentoring sessions aimed at increasing girls’ confidence and
interest in STEAM coursework. The STEAM workshops, held on weekends
and open to the whole family, include an array of activity stations staffed by
League volunteers. Our volunteers engage students with questions that spark
their curiosity. One of these recent workshops celebrated fall and leaf
science.
Colorful fall leaves were scattered across
the room and incorporated into most of the activities at the November Project
STEAM workshop, held at the Redwood City Library. Students and their families
studied shapes and veins while making rubbings of pressed fall leaves. They
created drawings of tree trunks with realistic bark and added real dried leaves
with glue. At the tinker table, whole fragrant spices like star anise, cinnamon
sticks and cardamom pods, added to the sensory experience of constructing a
fall wreath. At another station, students painted leaves cut from coffee
filters with watercolors to create coffee filter leaf sun catchers—beautiful
when taped to a sunny window. Leaves turned into animals and insects
at the leafcritter table. Examples include layering multiple leaves for an owl
or using a single leaf for a fish. Acrylic paint was applied for accents like
eyes and feet, and when dry, had a glossy 3D effect. At the popular Candy Cane
playdough station, students measured ingredients, followed directions and got
messy making red and white playdough, scented with peppermint oil. Then they
rolled the playdough into snakes and twisted a red snake around a white snake
to make a playdough candy cane!
The
usual favorite activities were also available:
- Snap
circuit kits which encourage a curiosity for electrical design
- Marble
runs and fort building that bring out the budding engineer and architect
- Programming
Dot the robot, powered by a tablet app, to navigate an obstacle course
The
November STEAM workshop was attended by 24 eager children (10 of whom were girls) and
5 enthusiastic League volunteers from the Project STEAM committee. It was
blustery fun for the whole family!
-->
