A new UCLA club is teaching Los Angeles’ elementary school children to love science.

SPROUT at UCLA, which formed in January, aims to bring one free STEM field day to schools in the LA Unified School District for kindergarten to fifth-grade students. The club aims to present STEM as a potential career option for all students, said Patrick Ngo, one of SPROUT’s co-founders.

Since STEM can sometimes feel intimidating, SPROUT’s goal is to introduce science in a supportive, accessible and safe environment, said Ngo, a third-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student.

While learning science from a textbook can be confusing and ineffective at times, STEM field days can be more interactive and exciting, leading younger students to become more curious about science, said Kareem Alba, the club’s other co-founder and a third-year molecular, cell and developmental biology student.

Studying STEM can be more than just a means to earn money after college, Ngo said.

“At a young age, all kids really want to do is enjoy life, have fun,” Ngo said. “That’s exactly what STEM can be.”

Students often think of school as a chore, said Ethan Tucker, an advocacy director for SPROUT. He added that SPROUT can help elementary school students enjoy science, allowing them to positively impact the world as teenagers and adults.

Young students are also impressionable and heavily influenced by what their parents think and do, Tucker said, adding that academic exploration is one way of shaping who students become without parental direction.

“Your brain is malleable,” said Tucker, a third-year psychobiology student. “Those early experiences in school where you’re away from your parents, and you have friends, and you’re in this environment where you’re able to learn things – … that can shape who you then become when you’re an adult.”

Aravinth Ruppa, a finance and logistics director for SPROUT, said he believes that success in STEM at the elementary school level is in part dependent on a student’s level of confidence. Ruppa, a third-year economics and molecular, cell and developmental biology student, added that SPROUT seeks to inspire students and improve their confidence rather than focusing on technical STEM concepts.

Students can gain a sense of agency through hands-on scientific exploration, Ngo said.

“There’s nothing more powerful than thinking about what you can do and seeing it happen,” Ngo said. “Creating experiences for kids early on, that STEM is doing something that they can really see themselves doing hands-on – they’re getting in there, and they’re really enjoying it – I think those are the very important experiences that we give to kids.”

UCLA undergraduates are also given opportunities to learn through SPROUT, Ngo said. Instead of club leadership determining what experiments will be taught during the field days, members of the club are able to develop their own curriculums and pitch their ideas in a competition held by the club, Ngo added.

Club members will follow the Next Generation Science Standards used in California public schools to determine what students should learn, Ngo said. They will also create budgets and proposals for their projects, he added.

There are many options for these experiments, Ngo said, including a more complex version of the “baking soda volcano” experiment using different colors of Play-Doh to teach about rock layers.

“SPROUT is like a sandbox in the sense that everyone can do almost anything they want,” Ngo said. “That’s really the nature of STEM that’s so exciting.”