Spark Academy Newsletter

Our Spark Academy after-school program had an amazing first week. All of the students are getting to know each other’s interests, familiarizing themselves with the program, and are exploring their activity areas. We are excited to see the program continue to grow as the school year progresses!

STEM

During orientation, students were introduced to all the exciting STEM activities available at Spark. This week they engaged with Cubelets. These robot blocks help teacher important problem-solving skills such as collaboration, engineering, design, and computational thinking. Next week, we will bring out the microscopes to explore their environment at a microscopic level!

Let’s Get Physical!

Towards the end of each day most of our students spend their time on the field or under the Solar Awning. They are allowed to choose a sport or join in on a staff facilitated activity. This week student added a new challenge to soccer using the scooter boards.

Arts, Crafts & More

Students have free but monitored access to a plethora of art supplies. The VIMSIA School T-Shirt competition sparked an interest in design. The younger students were introduced to Magic Model clay - a unique lightweight modeling material.

Reading

To our delight, we found that every student in our program has already developed a love for reading. They were thrilled to see that we were located right next to the library and had free access to it! One of the highlights for the week was watching the older students willingly and patiently assist the younger students with navigating the library and checking out books.

What’s to come?

We will be starting on our garden after Fall Break! Students have already begun brainstorming and it will be the epitome of biodiversity with all their great ideas.