A parent helping their child work on a circuit kit at the Oceano Family STEAM Night
On February 5, Oceano and Fairgrove families filled the campus at Oceano Elementary School for an evening of hands-on exploration at the school’s second annual Family STEAM Night. From 5–7 p.m., students and their families engaged in “Adventures in Energy,” a theme designed to spark curiosity through chemical engineering, product design, and interactive challenges representing science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics.
The event—complete with free food, raffle prizes for STEAM materials, and take-home activity kits—invited families to learn side by side. At the heart of the evening was a simple but powerful idea: learning happens best when it’s shared.
Learning Together, Station by Station
Students received “STEAM passports” as they arrived, encouraging them to visit each station and engage in conversation about what they were discovering.
“So, kids come to each station. They have passports and what they do is they walk around with their families,” explained Francesca Ardizzone, middle school science teacher and STEAM TOSA. “The passports support dialogue and conversation around what’s going on. Each station represents a component of STEAM. For example, when they come to this station, the ‘M’ is for mathematics. What they’re focusing on is data collection and using numbers to make sense of how it works.”
Stations throughout campus invited students to tinker with circuits, experiment with magnetism, and explore the forces behind energy and motion. One popular activity featured a butterfly suspended in midair through magnetic attraction, introducing students to the fundamentals of magnetism. At another station, children designed refrigerator magnets, blending artistic expression with applied science. Students also experimented with circuits and electromagnets, discovering how magnets can switch on and off when connected to a battery.
For many students, the chance to try something new was the highlight of the evening.
“My sister has a teacher, Mrs. Hall. And Mrs. Hall is running this entire thing,” said Gina, a fourth-grade student at Oceano Elementary. “She convinced my sister to come, and she doesn’t like being alone, so I came with her. I got to see friends, and I feel like the fact that I get to try something new is awesome.”
A Community Effort
Family STEAM Night was made possible through broad community collaboration. Ardizzone emphasized that volunteers are essential to the event’s success.
“One of the things that makes the evening work is that we have volunteers,” she said. “We’ve got our staff—teachers, custodial staff, secretarial staff, administrative staff—that come out to help us. We also partner with the high school and the middle school, classes like ASB and leadership, so that students who volunteer get those community service hours that work towards graduation.”
The turnout exceeded expectations.
“This is our family night and this is our second year hosting,” Ardizzone shared. “Oceano has always been so gracious to let us do our pilot family night here, and the crowd is double what we expected it to be. We are just blown away.”
A parent helping their child with their physics kit at the Oceano Family STEAM Night
Building Inquisitive Minds
For Kristi Hall, Oceano Elementary teacher and STEAM TOSA, the evening represents more than a series of fun experiments—it’s about cultivating long-term curiosity and confidence.
“I’ve been working here for 20 years now and I’ve taught many of the different grades,” Hall said. “I was our maker space teacher for eight of those years, and I really wanted to teach our kids how to use tools and to explore their world. That’s kind of morphed into this STEAM position where we’re working with our younger students and getting them excited about science.”
Hall believes hands-on learning creates lasting impact.
“We want them to have fun and make memories here at our school about science and engineering and feel like they’re capable of making products on their own,” she explained. “Kids that tinker and play and explore become inquisitive adults and more inquisitive students. Maybe they’ll want to take more classes in those STEAM careers. Maybe they’ll have more curiosity around science and engineering.”
She reflected on her own experience attending a Maker Faire in San Francisco years ago, where she learned to solder and still keeps what she made. “It can be a core memory,” she said. “Our kids cherish these things that they’re proud of making themselves. It’s just a core memory of being a maker, being a scientist, being an engineer—and they bring that excitement forward with them.”
Expanding Possibilities
Kian Pemberton, a teacher at Fairgrove Elementary School, underscored the broader significance of STEAM education.
“I think this STEAM night is so important because in school there’s all of this focus on math and ELA,” Pemberton said. “There’s just not enough time in the day to get kids all of this amazing information about all of these other potential futures for them.”
He noted that many students learn best by doing.
“STEAM is about how the world works. It’s about getting your hands on things and building something. For a lot of kids, that’s how they learn. They’re not going to learn sitting there reading out of a book. They’re going to learn by going out and touching something and building something.”
Inspiration That Continues at Home
For Ardizzone, the most meaningful moments of the evening were the ones unfolding quietly at each station.
“To me, the most important aspect is what you see right here—families having a conversation about what’s going on and what they’re doing,” she said. “The more you have those conversations, the more you keep the inspiration going at home to tinker and ask questions and explore together.”
As families left with handmade projects, raffle prizes, and new ideas to try at home, Family STEAM Night accomplished its goal: bringing science, creativity, and community together under one roof—and sending inspiration home with every child.
