The Southwest Iowa STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Region and Guthrie County Extension and Outreach are partnering this June to bring hands-on learning to kids’ homes.

Southwest Regional STEM Manager Deb Frazee explains that her organization is in year four of a five-year commitment with Guthrie County Extension to bring STEM to area families, which has been done with STEM festivals in each of the county’s school districts, “So we’ve been to Coon Rapids, we’ve been to Panora, we’ve been to Guthrie Center, and this year we were supposed to have been in Stuart and that’s when COVID hit. And because we have this partnership and because the program providers and businesses and such in the county have missed having that festival, we tried to figure a way that we could do something to still engage the students because they missed the social time, the learning time with the end of the school year. So we came up with this plan and we’ve got nine locations.”

In what has been dubbed “Guthrie County 2020 Olympix: Imagine Your Own Adventure,” two different summer activity packets for grade levels of kindergarten through third and fourth through eighth students will be distributed weekly at libraries and other locations in all the communities within the county’s school districts. Many of these “unplugged” activities will be health and sports-related in tandem with the 2020 Summer Olympics that have been postponed. Frazee says around 400 kids are already signed up for the program. For more information, visit here.