Yavneh Academy held its first-ever Family STEM Night for students in grades three to five, accompanied by their parents or grandparents. The response was overwhelmingly positive with a capacity crowd pre-registering to attend. The evening consisted of numerous interactive, hands-on activities, with an emphasis on robotics, engineering and collaborative skills. Each activity or challenge was facilitated by a middle school student volunteer. Some of the challenges featured were creating a geodesic dome using toothpicks and gumdrops, using a 3D pen to create a luggage tag or jewelry, collaboratively building a tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows or programming robots to play basketball or travel a maze.

Parents enthusiastically shared their comments about the evening. “My son was supposed to play baseball but chose to come to STEM night instead. It was so worth it!” “I didn’t know what to expect. This was awesome.” “It allowed them to use their imagination and creativity in ways they didn’t know they could.” Each student and parent team was able to experience up to five different challenges. “The best part was working with my mom.” Parents and children requested to stay later than the scheduled end of the program in order to complete just one more challenge. Yavneh was happy to oblige them and extended the length of the program.

As our world progresses towards an increasingly tech-based society, the study of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) has gained prominence within the education community. At Yavneh Academy, students experience STEM throughout their academic year in a variety of ways.

Family STEM Night was hosted by the Educational Technology Department which is directed by Chani Lichtiger, and includes technology integrators Claire Hirschhorn and Tova Burack.