1. Write a poem or story about science.

Get writing! Tell a story about your favorite scientist as dramatically as you can, write poetry about a cool science fact, or describe a feat of engineering using your most vivid vocabulary.

2. Teach your family about something you love.

The best way to learn something deeply is to teach it. Turn your family members into your students and tell them all about something you鈥檝e learned recently whether it鈥檚 how to build the best paper airplane or how a chemical reaction works.

3. Create nature art.

Make a leaf rubbing, stick sculpture, or tower of balanced pebbles to integrate both sides of your brain.

4. Invent something to solve a problem.

What鈥檚 something you wish were easier? Design something to meet a need, starting with a blueprint and working toward a prototype.

5. Test your brain with riddles.

Find challenging riddles on or elsewhere, then attempt to solve them with your family.

6. Head to the library.

Ask a librarian to help you find books about STEAM at your reading level. Reading is a wonderful way to find a new interest!

7. Ask questions.

STEAM is all about asking creative questions and trying to find answers. Observe the world around you and keep a list of questions you come up with throughout the day: How do stoplights work? Why do some trees lose their leaves and not others? Then work with an adult to find the answers.

8. Build something using recycled materials.

Gather items you normally would have thrown away 鈥� packaging, receipts, dried-out pen, etc. 鈥� and see what you can build out of the items!

9. Interview a scientist.

If you were a scientist, what kind of scientist would you be? Research to find someone who has your dream job, then write them a letter or email asking them about their work and how they got to be where they are.

10. See what 优蜜视频 offerings are coming up!

If you鈥檙e local to the Pasadena area, check out our upcoming workshops (7^th-10^th grade), check back for the Spring schedule of classes (K-8^th grade) in a couple of weeks or mark your calendars for when the (10^th-12^th grade) externship program application goes live!

Celebrating a different way? Comment below!

Hi, I鈥檓 Cassidy Kao. I鈥檓 a twelve-year-old author and the founder and CEO of (more on this later). Additionally, I recently led my third poetry workshop at !

优蜜视频 Academy helped me start teaching others and supported me by hosting my poetry workshops, for which I鈥檓 very honored and grateful. The most recent workshop that I led at Academy was 鈥淪hakespeare鈥檚 Tragedies and Sonnets,鈥� based on my most recent book, .

In this latest workshop, I taught students about William Shakespeare then moved onto the characteristics of his tragedies and Macbeth, the star tale of the workshop. Students acted out a scene from the play. Since it was a small class, I played one of the characters and we invited parents to join in so they could provide sound effects! Afterward, I introduced them to the sonnet, and the complicated way that Shakespeare wrote his. Because of the complexity of sonnets, we wrote the first part of a sonnet together so students could take it home and continue writing. To wrap it up, there was a short insult contest where they used words that Shakespeare once used for fun to construct their own Shakespearean insults! It was a really fun class and I hope they left knowing more than they had before.

Conducting workshops like this one is what I do for iPoetTree. iPoetTree is an organization I recently created with the objective to help young, reluctant writers to love writing through poetry. This all started when I was eight. To celebrate National Poetry Month, I wrote a poem a day throughout the month and grew my own Poet Tree on the wall of my hallway. I later published my first book with all of the poems I wrote and instructions on how to write different types of poems. Then, I wrote another book, and another, and another! Most of the books that I wrote included some sort of poetry since poetry was the very thing that started the whole journey. I taught free workshops in my community based on the theme of my books and the poetry that was included in the books. I enjoyed this so much that I decided to create iPoetTree and the website to go along with it.

You can find my website at , where your children will learn how to write different types of poems by watching videos I created. After they聽watch the videos, they can write their own poems and share them with other young writers on the website. I created a curriculum of five levels, with about three to four different types of poems in each, and grouped them by level of difficulty. At the end of each school year, I will select a collection of poems and publish them in a book to help the authors of the selected poems become published.

Please go to my website and help your children sign up and start learning poetry! I really enjoy teaching and, some day, I hope to train others to teach workshops of their own so that I can reach out farther than my community and teach more kids the joy of writing.

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