Organizers of Remake Learning Days in San Diego County are hoping local. families, tired of being cooped up for much of the COVID-19 pandemic, will come out in droves to participate in the many events planned this for year.

“People are eager to get back together. We have seen a big interest in STEAM fairs or STEM block parties in and around San Diego. They’re very popular,” said Eric Meyer, assistant director of education at the Fleet Science Center.

This is San Diego County’s third year hosting Remake Learning Days. But it’s Meyer’s first year leading the county’s festival, which runs April 22 – May 2 this year. Most of the events will be held in-person, though there are some virtual programs scheduled.

One of the highlights: The free STEAM Day at the ARTS (A Reason to Survive) Center, happening at 10 a.m. on April 23, will invite students and young adults to try a range of family-friendly STEAM activities, tour the Kinetics: Art that Moves You art exhibition and explore the Maker Workshop.

The event will also feature CORI engineering education tool kits for middle-schoolers and Lego kits for younger learners.

“They have a call out for artworks that are kinetic in nature,” Meyer says, “and a group will be showcasing their maker space at the ARTS location.”

Remake Learning Days in San Diego will also include professional development events for teachers. On April 28 at the Jacobs Institute for Innovation in Education at the University of San Diego, teachers will learn to teach Design Thinking skills using four key areas of learning: understanding, ideation, prototyping, and pitching.

This is a virtual event that will allow educators from across the nation to participate. “We’ve seen that over the course of the pandemic, virtual learning has opened up opportunities for people everywhere to participate in things,” Meyer said.

Other events in San Diego County include:

• A Spring into STEAM: Let’s Grow Workshop at the City of San Diego Library, 3:30-4:30 p.m., April 22. At this event, the Branch Out Academy program will introduce young people to the benefits of trees with one-hour training sessions on how to plant and care for trees in urban environments. Participants will take home their own tree sapling.
• Trash into Treasure: Creating Plastic Landscapes, 11 a.m. – 12 p.m., April 23, at the City of San Diego Public Library. Participants will use recycled materials to create a landscape collage, and they will explore the ways that artists depict landscapes as inspiration to draw their own images.
• STEAM Fair, 9 a.m. – 1 p.m., April 30, at Valley Elementary Educational Foundation. Open to grades K-5, this free event will feature hands-on science and art activities, performances, a mini maker space, food trucks and more.

One of the advantages of Remake Learning Days is it “allows the community to get a sense of educational partners that are around,” Meyer says. Depending on a child’s interest, families “can learn who has opportunities for them.”

Just one example: If your child is interested in coding and robotics, you can attend a coding event during Remake Learning Days and discover local organizations that teach this skill. “It helps you to know some of those people,” Meyer says.

He also praised the public library for participating: “Oftentimes, people don’t think of the library as a facilitated place for public programming,” but it’s a wonderful resource.

Along with building awareness of learning opportunities, Remake Learning Days events highlight community collaboration and show just how large San Diego’s learning ecosystem is.

“Everyone is putting these together,” Meyer said. “We are going to develop an understanding as to how many people we reach as a collective, not just as an individual organization. Each is part of a larger collective effort. That is always something to celebrate.”

More information about Remake Learning Days in San Diego County can be found here.