
are Kennedy Walker, left, and Khalis Muhammad
for their wind turbine. The girls will start sixth
grade in the fall. (Photos by Marilyn Thomas/
H-F Chronicle)
The first District 153 STEAM Camp gave one student a chance to create replicas of Chicago’s downtown buildings, a team the opportunity to build a robot and another to produce a movie. It’s all part of STEAM — science, technology, engineering, arts and math.

grader at James Hart
School, built a replica of
downtown Chicago’s
buildings.
“It was a blast!” said Jack Keigher, who joined with two friends to build a solar oven. He reported “lots of good energy” abounded at the camp the last week of June.

from left, Timmy VanEtten,
Jack Keigher and Parker
Lomaeglio won third
place honors.
Cheri Pesina, who directs the CMA side of the Smart Lab, and Nigro, the STEM lab facilitator, convinced the administration to host a summer program. They weren’t sure how it would go, but the 40 students in the session learned together on projects as varied as bridge building, robotics, animation and computer coding.

Sommer Owens, left, and
Tabitha Werner selected
for their animation project.
They are incoming sixth
graders.
The five-day camp gave students entering sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth grades the chance to design projects that could win honors.
The first place winners were incoming sixth graders Kennedy Walker and Khalis Muhammad. Their first project — a Ferris wheel — collapsed the day of judging, but they were about to turn a loss into a win by converting their project into a wind turbine.

Woodward and Amy Ward who worked on a
robot project, and Timmy VanEtten, Jack
Weigher and Parker Lomaeglio who built
a solar oven.