Thursday, June 27th Annex Charter School held their 4th Annual S.T.E.A.M. Camp Open House where parents and family were invited to come check out all the fun S.T.E.A.M. projects students had been working on throughout the four week camp. This year’s camp had a great turn out with the average daily student attendance hitting around 25 students.
Students were immersed in hands-on education opportunities such as heart health, cloud identification, basic coding with robots, 3D printing, Z Space 3D computer programs and even cow eyeball dissection!
This year’s artist in residence was Rikki Jo Hickey out of La Grande, Oregon who is part of the Art Center East’s Artist in Rural Schools Program. She owns a theater studio in La Grande where she teaches acting. Her focus for this year’s class was to teach students how to be comfortable in their bodies and honoring partners when they work with one another. “We did a lot of team building,” Hickey stated.
One of the units was clowning. Students learned to dawn new personalities and how to stay in character when they put their red noses on.Those in attendance Thursday were treated to a small performance where students volunteered to put their clown noses on and introduce their character and tell a joke. Hickey shared her thoughts on her students this year stating, “They were pretty amazing overall. I knew when I brought the clown noses out they would kind of be hesitant, but every single student put a nose on, every single student tried it. There was a really wonderful group of kids here, it was awesome. ”
Joe Burrris, a teacher from the Charter school, shared his thoughts on this year’s camp stating, “I feel like our attendance was really consistent this year. We also had quite a variety of projects this year. All the students seemed to really enjoy exploring the different projects they were doing. All the different activities were somebody’s favorite. I feel like it was a very successful year.”
Students and attendees were treated to snow cones from Sterling Shaved Ice in celebration of the ending of the camp.
