We arrive and set up
Two folding tables if you have them. We bring everything else, including the keyboard.
Free workshops and take-home kits
A youth-led nonprofit combining art and STEM in hands-on projects for students of all backgrounds.
We run sessions at libraries and community programs. No screens, no software, no setup on your end. Kids leave holding something they made and can explain.
Science that you can hear, hold, and hang on a wall.
Most STEAM activities are craft with a science word attached. Kids make art about a concept and go home with a decoration. We build the opposite. In our sessions the science is the only way to get the object. You cannot play your data without scaling it first. You cannot tune your instrument without the math. You cannot make a sun print without controlling exposure.
That means every kid leaves with something that could not have come from anyone else, because the data was theirs. Their sleep, their walk to school, their neighborhood, their voice.
Rising with STEAM is youth-led. Sessions are free, run about twenty minutes per child at a drop-in table, and work for a mixed age crowd from second grade up.
What kids make
Sound and data
Data, played out loud
A kid picks numbers that belong to them. Hours of sleep across a week. Temperature in their zip code. Steps on the way to school. They plot the numbers on a grid where sideways is time and up is pitch, then play the line on a keyboard.
To do it they have to decide what the highest number becomes, what the lowest becomes, and what happens to everything between. That is scaling, and they learn it because they need it.
Takes home: A plotted score of their own data.
Acoustics and ratio
An instrument that has to be in tune
Kids build a simple string instrument from a box, a board, and fishing line. The rule is that it has to actually play in tune, checked against a real note.
Getting there means measuring string lengths in ratio. Halve the length and the pitch jumps an octave. This is the arithmetic underneath every piano ever built, and almost no kid gets to meet it.
Takes home: A working instrument they tuned.
Light and exposure
Sun prints as a measuring tool
Kids arrange objects on light-sensitive paper and expose it outside. The print is real photographic chemistry, first used in 1842, and it comes out deep blue.
Each group logs exposure time and conditions, then compares results across the table. The wall of finished prints turns into a record of the afternoon’s light.
Takes home: A cyanotype print and their exposure log.
How a session runs
-45 min
0:00
Doors open
Three stations run at once. A volunteer stays at each one the whole time.
Per child
Pick data, plot it, play it
About twenty minutes start to finish. Younger kids use a prefilled dataset. Older kids bring their own numbers or make them up on the spot.
Rolling
Finished work goes on the wall
Prints and scores get pinned up as they dry. By the end the display is the whole afternoon.
+30 min
We clean up and send you the count
You get a headcount and any photos within two days.
What a session asks of you
What we bring
- All materials, prepped and counted
- A portable keyboard and every worksheet
- Three to five volunteers, briefed in advance
- A one-page handout families take home
- Headcount and photos after the event
What we need from you
- Two tables and a bit of wall or easel space
- Access to sunlight or a doorway for sun prints
- A staff contact on site during the session
- Whatever photo consent process you already use
- No budget, no equipment, no prep from your team
Tell us a date and we will build the session around it.
Summer reading finales, family nights, back-to-school events, and school breaks all work well. Reach out and we will send a short outline for your specific room and age mix.
Book a sessionOr email hello@risingwithsteam.com.