The Ask: Boys and Girls Club of South Alabama serves 180 students each year across 6 21st CCLC school-based clubs, all in Title I-funded schools. Their mission is “to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.”
The KiwiCo Solution: Michelle Middleton, Director of Chastang-Fournier K-8 and School Based Clubs, turned to KiwiCo to achieve this goal. Throughout the last year, she used KiwiCo activities in all 6 of her school sites. KiwiCo crates created “a sense of belonging, and just made it a whole lot easier” to facilitate their DIY STEM programs. As students explored robotics with our Light Chasing Robot and astronomy with our Solar System Book Set, they also built resilience, confidence, and problem-solving skills.
“We’ve definitely got some kids thinking about their career readiness with KiwiCo crates. Some kids that never thought about engineering and tinkering and putting things together, or their artistic side, have just flourished and thrived.”
-Michelle Middleton
KiwiCo aligns to the Boys & Girls Clubs 5 Key Elements
- Build a safe, positive environment: KiwiCo activities encourage collaborative problem solving, creativity, and confidence.
- Establish supportive environments: Our crates come with all the materials, so educators can focus on building relationships with and among their students.
- Provide recognition: Our crates offer opportunities for educators to acknowledge growth, learning, and leadership among their students.
- Offer Opportunities & Set Expectations: Each crate comes with extension ideas and examples of STEM in real life. Michelle connected our Robots and Coding crate with the Boys and Girls Club program. She said “the multiple activities in the kit helped us create extensions that we didn’t even know we could do. We have a program called myfuture.net, where we use Scratch and it all just blended so beautifully.”
- Create fun: At the core of the KiwiCo mission is to deliver seriously fun hands-on learning for kids of all ages that not only foster creativity and curiosity, but also create an educational journey infused with excitement.
For more information on how KiwiCo may be able to support your club with hands-on STEAM learning crates, reach out to one of our education specialists at schoolsgroups@kiwicrate.com.