The Great Engineering Challenge

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics – four interconnected disciplines that are at the core of today’s most innovative industries and careers. Engaging with STEM from a young age nurtures a child’s natural curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking skills. It equips them with the knowledge and competencies to not only excel in school but also navigate a rapidly evolving world marked by technological advances. By participating in hands-on STEM education, children can foster a love for discovery and problem-solving, developing essential skills that will empower them to become future leaders, innovators, and contributors to society. Moreover, it opens up a world of opportunities in promising and rewarding career paths that are shaping our future.

We have many children return to attend the program each holiday with us, and to make sure we can provide an exciting program every holiday, we redesign to make each one unique. The activities for each program are designed around this theme, and typically are a range of activities that include students learning technical skills in a range of technologies (electronic circuits, 3D Design, 3D printing, programming, robotics, Artificial Intelligence, drones, and more), completing problem solving challenges in small teams, pitching their ideas and/or experimenting hands-on with science! Sometimes we offer specialist workshops / sessions within the holiday program schedule which allow us to provide an immersive technology experience with a smaller cohort (if this is provided it will be within the registration page).

The cost of the program depends on a number of factors including the number of days you enrol for and when you enrol. Typically, the cost of the program is $94 per day, but our best discount can lower the ticket price to around $70 per day. The earlier you register, the greater the discount – so please don’t hesitate or you may miss out.

All of our team members are highly skilled in the field of education and technology. All team members have Blue Cards, lots of experience in the classroom and with a large range of ages.

No food is provided due to risk of food allergies and intolerances. Please be sure to pack morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea for your child.

Simply click on the button on this page and fill out the form. This form will automatically calculate prices for the options you select and enable you to pay at the end of the form. You will receive a confirmation email that will also include a tax invoice.

We offer significant discounts for various circumstances such as early registration (the earlier you register, the larger the discount is), higher number of days (we offer ticket pricing that rewards enrolments for attending more days in the program), and for returning to the next holiday program (this is offered each program).

We provide parents with certainty that their child will enjoy their experience with us through a 100% money-back guarantee policy. If your child does not enjoy the program, we will refund you the entire program ticket cost – all you need to do is call us after the first day of the program. We’ve never had a parent wish to exercise this since we began our holiday programs in 2017 – but we want you to feel certain that you get more than you pay for when you enrol your child with us in our holiday programs.

The minimum number of days we can provide this program for is 2 days. We’ve found in the past that for students to really get into the program (e.g. pass through the nerves of meeting new students) that they need to be able to attend at least 2 days. Whilst I understand this is not convenient for some parents, it is a precaution we’ve introduced to ensure that our students get the best experience from our programs. Hence, to ease parents’ worries with enrolling their child we provide a 100% money-back guarantee to ensure that you can be certain that your child will enjoy their experience with us.

Prep to Grade 8 is the short answer – we typically divide these ranges up into groups based on age / STEM experience so we can tailor the level of challenge/support to each student. For example, in a past Harry Potter themed program we had a ‘wand making’ workshop which was more focused on creative design for younger ages (Prep – Grade 2) painted and decorated their own 3D printed wands to keep), whilst the middle ages (Grade 3 – 5) constructed the LED circuit that activates the wand with different colours of light and the older ages (Grade 6-8) build the circuit with a microcontroller before learning to program different outputs like air, light & water to actuate based on sensor inputs. In every program we carefully design workshops to extend, challenge and support students in design thinking, technology skills and creativity no matter the age, experience or expertise. I hope this gives you more insight into how we approach providing a tailored experience to a wide range of ages so that we can excite and engage students whether they are ‘new’ to integratedSTEM or this is their 10th program (and yes – we have a number of regular returners!). There are comments of other parents on this page – please have a listen to them and reach out if you have any questions 🙂

Typically the program runs from 9AM – 3PM, though we advocate that your child is dropped off at around 8:45AM so we can start together at around 9AM.

We do want to clarify – we are not offering a child minding service, and if that’s what you’re looking for there are plenty of options around Toowoomba. We specialise in providing engaging technology experiences that I can honestly say is unique to anything in Queensland (if not Australia). We will have specialist STEM educators leading the program, students will use real-world engineering equipment and even have robotic engineers designing the program to be an authentic engineering experience – all of which provide a significantly higher value for engaging children who are interested in technology & engineering than child minding at vacation care.

The real value of this program is providing an immersive experience in developing crucial skills in STEM, technology and problem-solving in a fun and supportive environment. This means that students will work in teams, be encouraged to brainstorm creative solutions and then learn how to use and apply technology and engineering skills to develop solve problems. This could, and typically does, include building and simulating electronic circuits, brainstorming designs and then 3D designing using computer software, perhaps programming, flying drones or even developing machine vision and AI algorithms. Our “secret” is to get students to unknowingly learn in the school holidays, begin to see learning more than just something you do at school and to be inspired to pursue their interests in STEM.

We know that parents can sometimes wonder: “I don’t know if this would be something my child enjoys”. So instead of never allowing your child the possibility to find something they love, we’ve taken on all the risk and we provide a money-back guarantee. We promise that if your child doesn’t enjoy the program we will refund you the remaining days of the program. All you need to do is let us know after their first day and we can assist you with this.