A group of students is spending part of their summer learning about a variety of career options in the Stem fields through hands on learning activities.

But the students aren't the only ones gaining knowledge and new skills.

At the University of Kentucky's Stem Experiences Camp.

Aspiring teachers are learning right along with them.

Are not.

This is a great way for, people that are interested in teaching or prospective teachers to come and learn a little bit about the field in a way that's friendly and, and accessible to them.

They're learning how to design experiences around Stem that are engaging, enriching, fun, but also have some really good, important Mary Jo.

I mean, another thing they're learning how to do is just to manage a group of kids.

That's a key element of teaching.

So this camp was originally founded as a way to get more students involved with students.

It's a great thing that every year they have plenty of pre-service teachers here who are learning all about working with Stem with students as well.

And then it's just a great way to get the kids involved and excited about it, and then get us excited about seeing them love Stem this fall.

Yeah, it's really like, show me why I'm so passionate about learning Stem.

I tell one student how to do Long division earlier this week, and it was just such like a proud moment for me.

My first time getting to do that with younger kids.

And so it really makes me like inspired to do that with the other kids as well.

I'm from south eastern Kentucky, and so there's a real big need for Stem education there.

And so I just feel like this is something that I'm good at and I want to do, and I just want to be able to go back and help those kids have a future.

In school a lot of times, Stem so as technology, engineering and math, can feel pre-scheduled and we can have learning objectives and some activities that are, fairly programed.

And that's important because we want to maximize the correct time.

But in a camp space is more fun.

We can really open it up and allow kids to be more creative, to design, to build, to imagine.

And it doesn't really feel like school because it's summertime.

And the other benefit is there are many kids from different community, different parts of the community, new faces, new experiences, making new friendships.

We have a great group of campers of all age groups from early elementary all the way through high school.

Join us.

And in any given session, they might be doing robotics.

They might be extracting DNA from a strawberry.

They might be building the tallest tower they can build with a preset of materials.

But whatever they're doing, they're going to be exploring.

They're going to be doing some hands on stuff, and learning through experience.

We like to mix it up sometimes, and every once in a while we'll come up with an activity like, we're going to we're going to try for this robotics challenge or this engineering challenge.

And and almost always our kids come through and surprised with some really amazing creativity.

And I'm hoping that with the robotics, that so we build stuff out of Legos.

Today we're building, a robot called spot and a rack of science is really fun because sometimes I think of it like boring, but at this camp, like, it changes my idea.

And I think it's really like, give him some camp.

There's nothing better than a thumbs up.

The University of Kentucky Stem experiences camp runs through June.