Science & Technology

Classes vary from term to term. Please check current program schedule for activities available this season. 

Beginner Bots
Explore the world of robotics through art and games! This hands-on introduction to robotics is all about colorful art, creativity, fun-first engineering, and team-based problem-solving. We’ll create hand-drawn, art-based computer programs using colors and shapes to guide our robots to solve exciting daily challenges. We’ll navigate mazes, race in the arena, and face off with friendly bot battles. We’ll build robots, cars, unicorns, flying cars with gears, wheels, pullies, and engineering sets from Lego, Hexbug, Brio, Bee Bot, Ozobot, Squishy Circuits, and Educational Insights to practice motor, critical thinking, problem-solving, and engineering design skills.
• Skills Learned Robotics, Coding, Hands-On Engineering, Story Crafting, Creative Arts, Game Design

Coding with Scratch Jr. 
Coding is the new literacy! With ScratchJr, we’ll program our own interactive stories and games. In the process, we’ll learn to solve problems, design projects, and express ourselves creatively on the computer. Screen time can be creative, fun, learning time. Let’s code!

Game Design for Computer Scientists
Jump (literally!) into the world of thinking machines and the internet of things as we create art and code and build computer games and apps that respond to our speech and movement. We’ll imagine and design devices and games with the Micro:bit microcontroller and improve our innovations through Google Teachable Machine and webcam-enabled block-based coding, building a portfolio of software and hardware for use in the classroom, and college and career. Includes an introduction to Python. • Skills Learned: Computer Programming, Computational Thinking, Physical Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Problem-Solving

Minecraft Engineering
Let’s build giant pixel art, adventure quests, circuit-based musical instruments & contraptions, and Hero’s Journey stories, all within a secure MakerState server. Minecraft is an open-world, creative game that promotes collaboration and problem-solving in an immersive environment where the only limit is the imagination.
• Skills Learned: 3D Design, Minecraft Engineering, Animation, Creative Arts, Story-Crafting

Roblox Coding and World-Building 
Do you love to play and build in Roblox? Get ready to create obstacle courses, racing and role-playing games, space exploration missions, pirate voyages, and city skylines — all through 3D design and games. Let’s go!

Science Explorers
Join ‘Brainy Bill’ in an exploration of the strange, the soaring, and the slimy world of science! From rockets to rainbows, students will learn to test hypotheses through hilarious, hands-on experiments. Each session features a different topic from chemistry, earth science, physics, or engineering, and finishes with an awesome take-home experiment to keep your student science-ing! PLEASE NOTE • The science curriculum changes from season to season so children can attend Bill’s workshops throughout the school year.

Scratch Coding & Game Design
In this introduction to computer programming students learn how to create their own video games using MIT’s block-based coding language for kids. SCRATCH allows you to combine art, animation and programming with our own heroes and adventures. Love playing games? This class is for you!
• Skills Learned: Coding, Game Design, Animation, Story Crafting, Creative Arts

Stop Motion Animation
Have fun with Tech & Media!  In this workshop children will learn stop motion, rotoscoping and pixilation techniques to create short animated videos. Over the course of the term students will have the chance to create characters with clay, legos and puppets, and send them on original adventures they get to write, shoot and edit. Imagination a must!

Thinking & Learning Machines 
Arts and crafts plus robots plus 3D design. We’ll build LEGO robots with obstacles courses we design ourselves from geometric jello blocks and play-dough straw. We’ll use 3D printing pens to create character jewels and cardboard automata to discover mechanics and physics. We’ll 3D design obstacles for our bots to navigate in Tinkercad and print that 3D art with the 3Doodler pen. We’ll also explore the fundamentals of AI and machine learning that are integral to how these robots work as we design and build a greener world. This is advanced hands-on creativity for advanced fun and learning…all for beginners! Let’s go!
• Skills Learned: Robotics, Hands-On Engineering, Coding (MIT Scratch), 3D Design & Printing

Tiny Techies
This workshop leads children through fun, building-based games and projects in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). Experimentation-based projects include programming robots to solve mazes, applying computational thinking to games like obstacle courses, engineering marble roller coasters, and exploring the capabilities of the Ozobot robotics platform.
• Skills Learned: Introduction to Computational Thinking, Computer Programming, Scientific Method, Hands-On Engineering, 3D Design

VEX Virtual Robotics & Game Coding 
Let’s design and build our own VEX virtual robots with sensors and bot brains to solve mazes, navigate obstacle courses, draw creative patterns and electromagnet coin-collecting games in this fun introduction to robotics, computer programming, artificial intelligence, and creative problem solving. • Skills Learned: Robotics, Hands-On Engineering, Coding, Creative Arts