Young Engineers

Note: not offered in winter because many projects require working outdoors.

Grades 3-5

Catapult Launch day!! Tension + trajectory + water balloons + target = Look Out!!

Reviews below. Click here for pictures from class!

Lots of people follow recipes for 30 years and still can’t cook. We don’t want that to happen to your budding engineers. In this class, kids will learn basic engineering concepts, while designing and building cool things like towers and bridges. We’ll be designing egg drops and … building working catapults that are almost as large as your child!

Class will meet indoors but we’ll periodically venture forth to test out what we build. Each student takes home his/ her own catapult. At the end of the term, we invite Young Engineers from all of our schools to convene at a park for a “launch party” - i.e. using our catapults to launch water balloons! NOTE: your child needs a ride home from the last class meeting.

Tired of having no clue what your kids do in all those clubs? The Great Adventure Lab is different! A day or two after every class, your engineering instructor will email a note explaining what your young engineer learned in the previous session and what’s next. Sometimes we even include photos and videos!

We love your thank you letters!

Young Engineers class format

We provide two instructors for 12 students.
Discounted tuition if we accept your school’s parent aide.

• EIGHT meetings, once a week,
  
• 60 minutes per meeting for the first 6 meetings; 90 minutes for last meeting.

• After school tuition: $145 per student includes $25 materials fee.
  
• Evening tuition: $150 per student includes $25 materials fee
• Scholarships are available. Details here.
• Areas of exploration: engineering, physics.
• Last class is a catapult party!!!

This was an outstanding experience for [my daughter].  She was extremely enthusiastic about it, enjoyed it tremendously, loved her instructors, and learned a great deal.   It has helped reinforce her ambitions to pursue STEM activities.

After seeing how excited she was about this club, and after she asked me to come and see it in action, I was able to attend 3 of the sessions myself.  I was very impressed with the suitability of the challenges the children were set, and with the help they received as they met those challenges through hands-on learning.

A great deal of thought has clearly gone into matching the activities to the time available and the age of the children.  The instructors did a very fine job. Thank you for offering this exciting option to our children.

- Woodlin E.S. parent, Silver Spring, Spring 2012

I just wanted to let you know that [my son] D. had a great time in the Young Engineers class.  It was the perfect activity for a kid like him who loves to learn using hands on activities.  Out of all of the after school activities my kids have participated in over the past 5 years, this was definitely the best!  I hope that you will do a “Young Engineers 2″ in the future.

-Bradley Hills E.S. parent, Bethesda, Spring 2012