Description of Programs
Our program in our main Discovery Space, SPI Spot (227 S. Main St) is meant to facilitate stimulating free play where visitors learn about the world around them through play with interesting equipment. It also functions as a community space where visitors (adults and children) interact with each other. Children learn in a social context and improve their social skills. Adult interactions can be personally satisfying and also build community and social capital. Adults, like children, exchange ideas and information. The large space is open, yet organized into areas geared for various purposes and ages, and fluid enough to allow children to go where they wish and parents to supervise multiple children.
Next door to our Discovery Space is our Programming Space (225 S. Main St.), where we host various activities including programming that cannot take space in our Discovery Space. Our Programming Space is used for summer camps, for community event activities such as Pi Day, Lego night, larger field trips and First Fridays that use both our spaces or require food. The space will also host a new Knox County 4-H sponsored STEM robotics club starting in April, 2015. Our combined space supports our presence at community events and programming outside our space.
Outside our space, SPI provides weekly science activities to the Columbia Elementary School after school program at the South Vernon United Methodist Church during the school year and will provide weekly activities for the Salvation Army Summer Day Camp, and at Riverside Park, Hiawatha Park, and Foundation Park in the summer. SPI also provides family friendly science activities at various venues such as Earth Day, Library Summer Reading Kick-off, Summer Music in the Garden, Ohiolina, Salvation Army Carnival and Head Start Family Night.
We see our role in the community as the hub for science and child-related activities. If we are not actually conducting the activities, we want to know about them and spread the information. We also have role in the efforts to revitalize the downtown.
Our program in our main Discovery Space, SPI Spot (227 S. Main St) is meant to facilitate stimulating free play where visitors learn about the world around them through play with interesting equipment. It also functions as a community space where visitors (adults and children) interact with each other. Children learn in a social context and improve their social skills. Adult interactions can be personally satisfying and also build community and social capital. Adults, like children, exchange ideas and information. The large space is open, yet organized into areas geared for various purposes and ages, and fluid enough to allow children to go where they wish and parents to supervise multiple children.
Next door to our Discovery Space is our Programming Space (225 S. Main St.), where we host various activities including programming that cannot take space in our Discovery Space. Our Programming Space is used for summer camps, for community event activities such as Pi Day, Lego night, larger field trips and First Fridays that use both our spaces or require food. The space will also host a new Knox County 4-H sponsored STEM robotics club starting in April, 2015. Our combined space supports our presence at community events and programming outside our space.
Outside our space, SPI provides weekly science activities to the Columbia Elementary School after school program at the South Vernon United Methodist Church during the school year and will provide weekly activities for the Salvation Army Summer Day Camp, and at Riverside Park, Hiawatha Park, and Foundation Park in the summer. SPI also provides family friendly science activities at various venues such as Earth Day, Library Summer Reading Kick-off, Summer Music in the Garden, Ohiolina, Salvation Army Carnival and Head Start Family Night.
We see our role in the community as the hub for science and child-related activities. If we are not actually conducting the activities, we want to know about them and spread the information. We also have role in the efforts to revitalize the downtown.
