After-school STEM that ends with something kids actually built.

What a CIP practice looks like

Every week, teams meet for about three hours at The Village at Vistancia Clubhouse. A typical practice mixes spontaneous problems (fast, creative warm-ups), work on the team's long-term challenge, and hands-on skill-building: measuring and cutting, simple mechanisms, structures that carry load, wiring a switch, sketching a prototype, testing it, and figuring out why it broke.

Because every problem is open-ended, there's no worksheet and no single right answer. Students learn the engineering design process by living it — define the problem, brainstorm, prototype, test, iterate — and they keep the messy thinking in their own Spark Journals and Discovery Portfolios so families can see the growth, not just the final product.

STEM plus the skills that make STEM useful

Hard skills — engineering, construction, coding, design — are taught every season. So are the soft skills employers keep asking for: communication, teamwork, leadership, and resilience. Our Creative Innovator Method™ puts both in the same toolbox.

Competition, if they want it

Divisions 1–3 compete in Odyssey of the Mind — the Arizona Central Regional tournament in February, State in March, and World Finals for teams that qualify. Our teams have advanced to World Finals in Michigan and Iowa. The Primary division (K–2) is competition-free.

Practical details

Weekly practices run August through May. Membership is $350 for Primary and $500 for Divisions I, II, and III for the season, or 5 monthly payments, with scholarships and Arizona ESA funds through ClassWallet available. We serve families from Peoria, Vistancia, Surprise, Glendale, and the Northwest Valley.