AACC Explorers: Levels 3 & 4
(Ages 12-18)
We are currently looking for interest in our Level 3 & 4 Curiosity Club program. We recently held a meeting to discuss what this group and their meetings might look like. We have posted the recording of this meeting here if you would like to watch it. A summary of the meeting can be found below.
Since we only had a few families at our meeting, we want to get a better understand of specifics of what you would like the AACC Explorers to look like. Please complete the attached survey. From this survey we will establish pricing and a meeting time for AACC Explorers.
Meeting Details
Here is a summary of the meeting we held on 9/21 and the items we discussed:
Amarillo Area Curiosity Club is a local chapter of Curiosity Untamed. It is a scouting-type group where participants explore over 10,000 different categories and earn badges for each thing they explore. We meet once a month as a group to earn badges and explore our world together. Currently we have a younger group (Pre-K through 12 years old) that we meet with and explore more basic topics. With AACC Explorers we hope to bring a deeper level of exploring, earning badges on much more difficult and hands-on topics.
The cost will depend on several factors including cost of materials, cost of the space we use, and possibly the cost of outings/field trips. Without factoring in the cost of field trips, we expect the cost of membership to be around $100-$150 annually per participant.
After reaching out to the church where we hold our meetings, they said we are more than welcome to use the same space at any time we decide (as long as it doesn't conflict with other people using the space) AND at no cost to us! We praise University Church of Christ and their willingness to let the community use their space so freely!
Outings and field trips will be based entirely on whatever badge we may be earning that month. For instance, one of the badges participants can earn is a Theme Park badge. For that badge, we may move our meeting for that month to Wonderland. At the meeting, we discussed whether or not to include the cost of these trips into the membership cost or charge an extra fee when we take these trips. The consensus was to charge an extra fee when taking these field trips rather than try and factor the cost into the annual membership cost.
We discussed both how long the meetings should be as well as some possible meeting times. The consensus was to meet 1 1/2 - 2 hours each month. As far as the day and time for the meetings we discussed 11:00-1:00 on the 3rd Thursday each month to coincide with our younger group meeting from 1:00-2:30. We also discussed the possibility of an evening meeting time on a different day. We would like more input before deciding on the most ideal time for our meetings. We have created a short survey to get everyone's opinion and will use the majority as our deciding factor.
We would like the participants to help us decide which badges to earn. There are over 10,000 badges through Curiosity Untamed and if there is a subject the participants would like to learn about that isn't included in those badges, we have the freedom to create our own badges.
We had 3 Level 3 participants we were integrating with our younger group previously. Before we decided to make Level 3 & 4 its own group, these participants looked through the list of available badges and selected several that they would like to earn. When we start our Explorers meetings, we will use their choices as a starting point and allow all participants a say in the badges moving forward.
We also discussed earning badges that will bring future value to the participants such as First Aid, Survival Skills, Auto Maintenance. We will mix these in with what the participants choose to earn.
In general we want to attempt to fully earn the badge in a single meeting just in case people are unable to attend one meeting. That way they won't be lost or trying to catch up during the second meeting. That being said, there may be some badges that are more involved. We will always make sure everyone is notified if we have a badge that will require more time to complete.
We highly encourage parental involvement in our meetings! We designed Curiosity Club to be a family affair. At the info meeting we discussed the possibility of allowing parents with particular knowledge of a badge to take the reigns for that particular meeting. You would still have our full support, but we want to use everyone's knowledge about the different things we explore.
Our goal is to earn a single badge in the span of a single meeting. Generally this would mean that your participant would miss out on that badge. We discussed the possibility of recording our meetings and have those recordings available to members to catch up. This is not definite and would more likely be used for badges that require more than a single meeting to earn in order to help those who missed catch up on the badge requirements.
At our info meeting we also discussed about badge requirements. Curiosity Untamed provides usually 3-4 specific steps to earning a badge and 10-20 other steps of which we choose 5-6 in order to earn the badge. Curiosity Untamed has set up their program to be extremely flexible to the point that we can even create our own badge requirements or even entire badges. We want to encourage participants and their parents, if they have particular knowledge about a badge, to bring their knowledge to the table. This could mean something as simple as us customizing a badge requirement to include that knowledge, or even the participant and/or parent leading the entire program that month for earning the badge.
Meeting Times
AACC Discoverers (Pre-K-12 yrs)
3rd Thursday
1:00-2:30
AACC Explorers (12-18 yrs)
TBD
Meeting Location
University Church of Christ
3400 Conner Dr,
Canyon, TX 79015
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