ARA’s STEM Community Fund recently provided funds to purchase Legos and Micro:bits for students at Pine Spring Preparatory Academy.
The Legos were used with STEM Task Cards to help students in grades K-5 put their maker skills to the test and find their creative maker modes. The Micro:bits help eager students in grades 2-5 be able to physically see the connection between software and hardware, which can be a difficult concept to grasp.
Computer Science teacher Carrie Gisondi thanked ARA for the sponsorship in the following letter:
“On behalf of the elementary students at Pine Spring Preparatory Academy and myself, we are so thankful for the generous donation from ARA to our Computer Science classroom!
Our students loved using the Legos to complete a winter design challenge! Students were able to use their creativity and critical thinking skills to work together to design mugs of hot cocoa, ice skates, sleds and much more! Students of all ages loved working with the Legos and look forward to more design challenges to come!
Our 2nd and 3rd graders just started using the Micro:bits and they are having so much fun! We are learning that computers are all around us and we can code them to make them do anything we want. We started by coding our Micro:bits to be name badges! We can’t wait to code them to be step counters, express our emotions and more!
The excitement, squeals, smiles, and learning that this grant has brought into my classroom is priceless. Thank you again!”
The ARA SERVICE program and associated STEM Community Fund were developed with ARA’s core value of service in mind. Under this program, ARA aims to inspire and motivate students to pursue STEM education and careers.
