The Discovery Center, operated by the United States Space Foundation, will partner with the Pikes Peak Library District to implement Small Steps, Giant Leap: STEM Adventures for Little Space Explorers, a free early literacy program designed for children ages 3-6 that seeks to engage the target audience of low-income and military families, populations currently underserved by the Discovery Center. The program is an interactive storytelling experience with an associated hands-on craft that occurs twice monthly, once in person and once virtually, and is designed to enable early learners to grow in literacy via the lenses of science and space exploration while developing vital social skills and self-esteem.
How do afterschool programs view their local public libraries? Are they working with them, and in what ways? These are the questions that the Afterschool Alliance, along with its partners at the Space Science Institute’s National Center for Interactive Learning (NCIL) and the American Library Association, wanted to answer. Overall, our goal is to build bridges between the afterschool and library fields, so that both can share knowledge and resources to better serve our youth. While our work together has primarily focused on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education through