Lance Akiyama - The Zoom, Fly, Bolt, Blast STEAM Handbook

When Galileo started in 2002, we never dreamed that wed inspire nearly half a million summer campers to innovate with us at more than seventy-five locations throughout California and Illinois. Now, with this book, were excited to share some of our most successful and beloved projects so your family can experience the magic of Camp Galileo at home.

While the art and engineering projects in this book do zoom, fly, bolt, and blast, theres more to them than that. Each Galileo project is carefully designed to develop children as innovators while they create. In fact, Galileos mission is to develop innovators who envision and create a better world.

We pursue our mission because we believe that the ability to innovateto imagine something that does not yet exist and to have the creative confidence (and skill set) to make that vision realityis one of the most powerful tools we can give children to prepare them for the future. This ability is shared by individuals like Thomas Edison, Dolores Huerta, Shirley Ann Jackson, and Marvin Gayeall famous inventors, activists, or artists who envisioned and created things that transformed the world on a societal level and helped to improve countless lives.

But innovation isnt just about creating the next big tech breakthrough or social movement. At its core, being an innovator is about being an actor in the world instead of a passive recipient. Its about reflecting on a situation, recognizing the possibility for something better, and making it happen. And so, we believe innovation also exists on a deeply personal level.

If a person notices she can have a better relationship with a friend and finds a way to make that idea a reality, thats an innovation. If someone recognizes he is not in an ideal work environment and implements his ideas to make things better, that person is thinking and acting like an innovator. If someone seizes an opportunity to improve something they do every dayhow they get to work or school, or what they do with their free timethats innovation, too.

Innovators are creators of desirable outcomes and have agency in their lives. They have a clear vision for what will make them happy and go and create that reality for themselves. Isnt this what we want for our children? For all children?

The good news is that the ability to innovate is not a talent that you are born with. Each of us can become more innovative by learning the well-defined skills and practices that predictably deliver innovation. At camp and in this book, we nurture innovators by infusing projects and experiences with our secret sauce: the Galileo Innovation Approach (GIA for short).

Inspired by the design thinking framework developed at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, the GIA teaches children how to create and think like innovators. Built into every Galileo project are the three components of the GIA: 1) substantive KNOWLEDGE that guides breakthrough thinking, 2) a transformative MINDSET that promotes innovative work, and 3) a time-tested, iterative design PROCESS that supports bringing the best ideas to fruition.

We hope your family zooms, flies, bolts, and blasts its way through the projects in this book. The more projects you do, the more opportunities youll have to practice the GIA and the more youll come to believe in your own ability to embrace challenges, learn from mistakes, and create without fear as you make your wildest ideas come to life.

Pamela Briskman
Vice President of Education

Glen Tripp
Founder & Chief Executive Officer

Galileo Learning
Oakland, California

Zoom, fly, bolt, blastthats just the start of it. These contraptions jump, drive, lift, grab, float, spin, vacuum the carpet, and even play music!

Nothing is more exciting than discovering you can build something that actually gets up and moves, solves a problem, answers a question, or brings on a chain reaction. Its contagiousthe more you make, the more you explore new ways of thinking, and the more innovative you become.

Science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM)-based learning is recognized as the best way to prepare kids for careers in the future. Its also the best way to inspire curious minds and have ingeniously satisfying fun while doing so. The eighteen projects in this book are based on the successful curriculum of Camp Galileo, Galileo Learnings national flagship summer program for rising students Pre-K through 5 th grade. From automatons to pneumatic machines, slingshot cars to suspension bridges, these projects guide kids to use their heads and their hands to generate ideas, design, create, test, evaluate, and redesign to their hearts content.