Girl Start

GirlStart. Yup I said that correctly. GirlStart, not Girl Scouts. I mean, I can see why there would be confusion since I am totally in love with Girl Scouts, but GirlStart is pretty spectacular too!

We discovered Girl Start a few years ago as they have a monthly STEM event and twice a year STEM events for.free. FOR. FREE. I love for free activities with my girls. I especially love for free activities for my girls where other people do the heavy lifting and all I have to do is bring them there. With Girl Start I bring them there and let them loose.

The twice a year events, the Back to School, and DecSTEMber (isn't that the cutest?) have 15-20 hands on STEM activities for the girls run by trained volunteers. The monthly events are all themed and have 4-5 hands on stations.

Every time we go, I am so thoroughly impressed with the quality of the STEM experiments and the volunteers engagement with the girls. They don't just "do" the activity for the girls. They ask questions. They guide them. They let them fail and then try again. They allow the girls to figure it out themselves! OMG. A dream come true learning environment!

This summer, the girls were old enough to attend GirlStart's day camps. I had high expectations because I had experienced first hand their STEM experiments and well, it was the most expensive day camp for the summer. My expectations were satisfactorily met, plus some! 

"Girlstart's Island Adventure Summer Camp. Girls channeled their inner conservationist as they learned about and constructed habitats for endangered lemurs, investigated and modeled coral reef formation, and discovered the environmental impacts of deforestation. Campers built disaster shelters to survive on a remote island and designed a prototype device to safely airdrop supplies to hard-to-reach places." From GirlStart!! What? Who gets to design these camps?? My girls are so stinky lucky!

I'm just going to copy and paste the rest of the wrap it up newsletter because it's just so amazing.

"Girls used the Sphero SPRK+ robot to survive on the land and ocean surrounding the island. Campers first explored the properties of density to engineer a Sphero attachment that could rescue lost rubber duckies off the coast of Madagascar. Then girls created an all terrain vehicle and programmed it to safely traverse across the island’s rough terrain"

"Girls experienced the unique qualities of Madagascar through Google Expeditions’ virtual reality system. On their expedition, girls visited different towns and learned about the people, their culture, and their relationship with the surrounding environment. Girls then brainstormed and mapped out how they would design their own personal virtual reality expedition."

Are you local and want to experience some of this amazing goodness yourself? You are in luck! the Back to School STEM fair is this Saturday and it is AWESOME! And Free! I do recommend getting there early because there can be quite a crowd. Yes, boys are welcome too!

https://girlstart.org/event/austin-tx-back-to-school-stem-saturday/