Fustany Team 
6/28/16, 12:00 AM 
Little Stark is the place to develop kids to be prepared for the real world, through a variety of experiences and activities. So to know more about Little Stark, we had a small talk with Little Star’s Managing Director, Amr Farid, and he told us everything you need to know to send your kids to Little Stark this summer.
Introduce “Little Stark” and the core idea behind this project.
Little Stark is the exclusive distributor of an international educational franchise called “Challenge Island” (CI) and our purpose is to develop the change makers of tomorrow.
CI is at the forefront of STEAM education and 21st century skills. We provide collaborative challenge-based experiences for ages 4 to 14+ in the form of after school classes, in-school workshops, camps, parties, homeschooling events, team building and multi-generational family adventures.
Our unique ability to simultaneously address the needs of both the playful, whimsical child of today and the globally successful adult of the future has brought CI a sea of accolades from schools, parents, and kids alike.
Why should parents be sending their kids to “Little Stark”?
Little Stark is there to develop kids to be prepared for the real world/new economy. The world we live in is driven by a couple of trends like information overload, interconnectedness and globalization, an innovation and creativity driven economy and an expanded civic life. These trends are not slowing down in the future, but are rather speeding up.
As a result, the current education system cannot keep up with these demands and it doesn’t prepare the children of today to be the change makers of tomorrow.
As today’s students face higher expectations in both school and the workforce, we need to develop the so called 21st century skills in the children of today to prepare them for the future. They help to prepare students for what they will need to know and be able to do in school and college, at work and throughout all aspects of personal and civic life. Students can build these skills by applying them as they learn regular school subjects. And we know that pointing out these skills will actually increase students’ grasp of what they’re learning, as well their overall engagement in their own education. Among these skills are creativity, critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration and team work, leadership, adaptability and flexibility and many more.
What kind of activities does “Little Stark” provide for kids?
We provide hands-on, action-packed, adventurous learning experiences that connect academic content with the real world through the STEAM methodology.
STEAM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in five specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. Rather than teach the five disciplines as separate and discrete subjects, STEAM integrates them into a cohesive learning paradigm based on real-world applications.
Little Stark will provide project-based, pedagogically relevant learning environments that will give the students opportunities to connect academic content to the real world by actively engaging them in designing solutions and models to solve everyday problems. The engineering design process is built using the main learning theories that drive STEM Education such as: inquiry-based learning, situated learning, problem-based learning, and constructivism.
STEAM has, after all, been tied to developing 21st century skills and a variety of other skills that are essential for success: critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and innovation, communication, collaboration, and entrepreneurship, to name a few.
What's the difference between projects vs project-based learning?
Projects: A Lego kit where kids follow certain steps to reach a certain outcome is a project. If you give this project to 1000 kids, they will all have the same outcome. Children learn to follow steps and orders.
Project-based learning: Children have a certain challenge to solve and each child comes up with a different project to solve this challenge. So the outcomes vary from one child to another. Children need to get creative and apply certain concepts and skills to solve the challenge. Example: Kids need to build a roller-coaster that has a hill and a loop and a curve. They can all build different roller coasters; however they all need to apply the concepts of potential and kinetic energy and friction to have a functioning roller-coaster that completes the hill, loop and curve. They don’t follow steps, they just have access to materials and they build the roller-coaster according to how they see it. They need to apply the engineering design process (brainstorming, design, build, and test) and repeat it until things work out for them.
So what's the age range of kids that can join 'Little Stark"?
Kids can join from ages 4 – 14, focusing on girls as well as boys. Most of the camps and activities out there are engineering themed, we do more than just that by tailoring to girls equally as the boys.
Where can we find “Little Stark”?
For our weekly summer camps, this summer we are partnering up with Art Café Maadi and ICE Cairo GrEEK campus AUC, so you can find us in the following locations:
Maadi: Art Café
Half of the day is Challenge Island and the second half is artist of the week, where kids cook meals from the origin of the artist and learn different art styles and techniques.
Tahrir: GrEEK campus: ICE Cairo
Half of the day is Challenge Island and the second half is build your company, where kids learn product design, graphic design, coding & digital marketing to build a product and turn it into a small business.
