Summer has flown by, and Aspire’s six-week, full-day summer camp has come to an end. It’s been full of so many wonderful moments, from students making new friends to learning new skills, and seeing them grow comfortable in this space has been inspiring. Students who at the beginning of camp would shyly read a book in the corner during reading time came out of their shells to read aloud paragraphs to the entire class! Others eagerly showed their parents the plants they’d grown in Aspire’s Community Garden or proudly gave pieces of their art to Aspire’s team.

This growth not only marks incredible progress in students’ social-emotional development, it also reflects their learning and the academic lessons that reinforce school-year content. Even as summer camp ends, Aspire is already preparing for the upcoming school year. Summer camps like Aspire’s ensure students are ready to enter the next grade with the tools, confidence, and support they need to succeed — and at no cost to their families.

To learn more about their favorite parts of these final weeks, read more below!

Weeks Five and Six

During the last two weeks of camp, students wrapped up their lessons on the different elements with a week focused on fire, and then they did a deep dive into one element they wanted to specialize in. What did students enjoy most from these weeks?

• Creating fire drill posters for their classrooms. Students are used to participating in fire drills as part of the school day and Aspire’s program, but in this fun activity, they worked together to research the different stages of a fire drill, consider how it would work at Aspire, and design their own fire drill posters.
• Learning about the role of fire in different types of storytelling, from myths to newspaper stories to movies. As a class, they read aloud a short article on oral storytelling and its role in indigenous history. Then students wrote their own stories about fire! Some worked in groups and others worked independently, and they all had a chance to present their creative stories to their classmates.
• Participating in arts and crafts lessons like creating Clifford the Big Red Dog puppets, making homemade candles from melted crayons, and designing paper plate dragons based on a book they read. These lessons help students build reading comprehension skills, creatively apply their classroom knowledge, and keep them engaged during a full day of learning.
• Developing their research skills by finding information on natural disasters. Depending on which element they chose, students found different sources to investigate two real-world occurrences of disasters like wildfires, floods, and earthquakes. After their focused research, they then reported out to the class on what they found.
• Painting monochromatic self-portraits. Using their chosen element to decide which color they would paint their portrait (for instance, students who chose the element of water painted in blue) and taking a picture of themselves for reference, they painted self-portraits and learned about techniques like shading and perspective. They also got practice in resiliency: when things went wrong, they had to keep going and see how they could make the mistake part of their final painting.
• Designing their own superheroes! Based on their choice of element, students created a superhero that used that element as their power. In pairs, they debated which of their superheroes would win in a duel and why.

Engineering Project with Jacobs

Aspire had a special visit from Jacobs, an engineering company, and Arlington County. Their volunteers led students through a hands-on STEM project over two days. Students heard from current Jacobs employees about their career paths and decision to enter the STEM field. Then, they worked with these engineers to put their engineering skills into action.

Students split into groups to work with volunteers on different projects based on their interests. For instance, some groups built an electric car and tested how far it could go. Other groups assembled and painted a (bird) house, constructed a windmill that really moved, and made water filtration systems. After each group finished, they discovered how their individual projects connected into a whole sustainable city. Projects like these are important because they expose students to STEM careers and build trust in their abilities so they have the confidence to become whatever they aspire to be!

Field Trips

The last two weeks of camp featured two special field trips! The first trip took students to the United States Botanic Garden, which built on students’ experience tending to Aspire’s Community Garden all summer. They had an amazing time learning from the staff and exploring the various plants. During their lesson, each student dissected a plant, experimented to see what they observed, and learned about pollinators.

To wrap up the lesson, students participated in a fun activity where they pretended to be pollinators. They had tiny straws to try and get to the “nectar” at the bottom of a cup, but they had to break through a layer of gauze and powdered sugar first. The sugar got all over their mouths and even after all that work, they only got a tiny bit of nectar! This experiment demonstrated to students how real pollinators get pollen all over them in the process of drinking nectar, and then have to go to another flower for more nectar, where they spread that pollen.

When they weren’t learning about pollinators, students went on an expedition to try and identify different types of plants around the garden and listen to experts talk about plants like cacao beans or the corpse flower. What were their favorite parts of the Botanic Garden?

• The Hawaii room, because one student has family in Hawaii and it made her feel connected to them.
• The Canopy Walk in the Tropics Room, where they could look down at all the plants in the room and feel how much hotter and humid it got at the top.
• Seeing banana trees and the peppers. All the students especially loved seeing the growing food, which reminded them of the Community Garden at Aspire.

For the second field trip, students could barely contain their excitement. On the last day of camp, Aspire always takes students to the water park, and they have been asking about the water park field trip since early spring! During this trip, they celebrated their hard work over the summer with water slides, a lazy river, and time to splash around with friends.

End of the Summer Celebrations

As we wrapped up camp, Aspire held an outdoor celebration to recognize the hard work of our AmeriCorps members, distribute plants grown from the Community Garden, and provide students with time to enjoy fresh watermelon and popsicles at the park. We even had visitors from the Arlington County Fair, who generously distributed ride tickets to our students and families. During this event, students shared all the things that they were grateful for over the summer. Their quotes include:

• “Thank you for helping us do everything we want to do!”
• “Thank you for being there in the tough times.”
• “Thank you for making the fun stuff happen!”
• “Thank you to all the teachers for making sure we’re safe and we don’t get hurt.”
• “Thank you for answering our questions.”
• “Thank you for making class as fun as possible!”

This gratitude extends to our whole community, from our supporters and partners to everyone who believes in these students. Thank you.