Movie Night & Car Show Promotes STEAM Curriculum

More than 500 families and staff attended the 2nd Annual Movie Night & Car Show at CII’s Watts Campus in early May. The event is a partnership with PBS SoCal and designed to prepare kids for success in school while encouraging group activities with families. The earth science and astronomy series Ready Set Go! was screened and families combined engineering and art skills to create homemade cars.

Families worked on the homemade cars over multiple weeks as part of an activity with their local Early Childhood Education program.

The cars provided an opportunity to promote STEAM curriculum, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics. The cars challenged kids to work on each of these subjects where they designed, built and decorated their own cars.

Early Childhood Education also uses this activity as an opportunity to engage parents around improving their own parenting skills. Families spent multiple hours together where they improved communications techniques and bonded together.

At the conclusion of the event, every child in attendance received a backpack that will be used next year in school. Families in the program live below the poverty line, making school supply purchases challenging.

The backpacks were donated by the corporate team at Age of Learning who volunteered to collect and organize the backpacks. CII’s Board Member Sunil Gunderia is the Chief Strategy Officer at the company.

The Annual Movie Night & Car Show featured other activities where kids could practice STEAM curriculum like experimenting with science projects.

Art was also featured throughout the event where kids showed off their artistic side.

Due to the event’s success, staff is already working to ensure next year’s event grows in the number of families participating. PBS SoCal continues to be an amazing partner for the event along with the support from strong corporate partnership in Age of Learning.