Mission to Mars and Beyond: How We turned STEAM Curiosity into Real-World Skills at Lafayette Elementary

At Lafayette Elementary in San Francisco, every lesson is guided by a clear mission: to develop students who “persist in problem-solving” and “embrace collaboration”. Students are encouraged to ask questions, test ideas, and discover solutions through hands-on exploration. Learning isn’t confined to a classroom or a single subject, it’s a mission-driven mindset that inspires students to think critically, create boldly, and grow with purpose. In Lafayette’s classrooms, curiosity leads the way, and every challenge becomes an opportunity to put their mission into action.

The Power of Experience: STEAM Takes Flight

This fall, Digital Dreamers brought the Mission to Mars directly into Lafayette’s classrooms. Students were tasked to do more than just simply watch or listen, they were encouraged to build, code, and solve problems in real time. These hands-on challenges pushed them to think outside the box, iterate on ideas, and collaborate to overcome challenges. Abstract goals like persistence and creativity became tangible as students designed Mars rovers, debugged codes, and tested their solutions, turning Lafayette’s philosophy into action, one experiment at a time.

The Mars Mission, Week by Week

With each week of the Mission to Mars program deepening that curiosity, students found themselves engineering cardboard rovers, testing how friction affects motion, and designing parachutes to understand what makes a safe landing. As the mission shifted into “survival mode”, they were challenged to make the best out of plastic bottles to build mini-greenhouses and experimented with water filtration to explore how a Martian habitat might sustain life. As their journey to Mars progresses every week, so does their journey towards exploration, non-stop experimentation, and self-expression.

The Impact Beyond Mars