STEM was created in 2001 to focus on science, technology, engineering and math curriculum in schools.

About six years later, a letter was added to the acronym to incorporate art.

Since then, schools have been going full STEAM ahead.

Jackson County Industrial Development Corp. offered a weeklong STEM Camp in the summer in 2016 and 2017, partnering with Jackson County 4-H.

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With JCIDC wanting to focus more attention on VEX Robotics around the county, it asked 4-H to handle the logistics of this year’s summer camp.

It was changed to STEAM Camp this year to dedicate each day to a different element — science, technology, engineering, art and math.

Heather VonDielingen, Jackson County 4-H youth development educator, shared the news with former 4-H’er Alysha Johnson, who will begin her second year as the art teacher at Margaret R. Brown and Emerson elementary schools in Seymour in August.

She asked Johnson to lead the art activities Thursday, and Johnson was more than willing to help.

“STEM itself is such a big topic right now with everybody, so putting art into that with creating STEAM, it really brings awareness to the arts in all schools and extracurricular activities and things like that,” Johnson said.

“We think about science and we think about math and technology, which are all very important, but we’re almost losing the interest in art,” she said. “You really have to be creative when you’re doing all of those different specific areas, so I think that art is actually really important in professionalizing yourself in those areas. I think it incorporates itself into everything that you have to do with all of those.”

During the July 11 session, Molly Marshall, a health and human sciences educator with Purdue Extension Jackson County, gave a food science lesson on why fruit browns and talked to the students about how citric acid can prevent browning.

Then Richard Beckort, the extension office’s agriculture and natural resources educator, led a lesson on plant science and pollinators.

“They actually got to make their own Mason bee home out of bamboo sticks to take them home and hang up in a tree,” VonDielingen said.

Beckort also talked about how the different ingredients of an ice cream sundae are only possibly because of pollinators.

“Then the kids got to make their own ice cream sundae, which they loved that,” VonDielingen said.

Technology was the focus June 12. Sam McCollum, Floyd County 4-H youth development educator, led a 4-H National Youth Science Day experiment called Incredible Wearables where they made their own fitness trackers.

“They learned about electrical engineering, and it actually recorded their steps and their heart rate,” VonDielingen said.

She took the reins June 13 teaching kids about the engineering design process. They also had a FaceTime session with Jackson County native Matt Moravec, who now works as a software engineer in San Francisco, California.

“It was really neat for him to talk about his experiences in Jackson County, how he worked in industry and then now is out there basically programming apps,” VonDielingen said. “That was really neat for the kids to see somebody who grew up here and then took those skills to another place.”

During the art sessions Thursday, Johnson had the kids make salt watercolor art, an agamograph and a suncatcher.

She said the purpose was to let kids know they can find creative ways to express themselves.

“When you’re bored in the summer or something like that, you can do things like creating things or making art or coming up with a really neat project at home — different ways to keep them entertained at home but also different ways to keep them inspired and keep them involved so they are ready for the next school year,” Johnson said.

She also wanted to share her passion of art with the students.

After graduating from Seymour High School in 2011, Johnson went to Indiana State University to study graphic design but wound up earning a degree in human development and family studies with a minor in art history in 2015.

“My art history minor allowed me to do things like clay and wire work and pieces like that,” Johnson said. “A lot of experiences in college really inspired me.”

While working for Cornerstone Autism Center in Greenwood, she got into the school system and realized she wanted to be an art teacher.

When the position at Seymour came up, she said she thought it was something she could see herself doing for the rest of her career.

Sharing her love of art at the 4-H camp was a bonus.

“I do a lot of art on the side, so it’s just something I’m really passionate about,” she said. “I feel like when you’re passionate about something, you become a better teacher with it if you really love what you’re doing, and that’s what I really found out.”

On Friday, VonDielingen led the session on math in nature and talked about how the Pythagorean theorem came to be.

Brynn Burton, 10, a sixth-grader at Brownstown Central Middle School, said she found out about the STEAM Camp while attending a 4-H biosecurity class and decided she wanted to go.

“Because you get to do different stuff,” she said. “That’s what my dad and mom are always wanting me to do, try as many things as you can because you can’t just be limited to one thing.”

Christian Hedrick, 10, a fifth-grader at Brown Elementary, said he heard other kids who had been to STEM Camp talk about it at school.

“I was very interested in it, so I asked my mom if I could sign up, and she said, ‘Yeah,'” he said.

Christian said it was fun doing art, and he also knows a lot of math, so that portion of the camp was interesting.

Only having about 15 kids at the camp allowed for more opportunities, Brynn said.

“With the engineering, we would have never done the wearable thing ever because normally with school classrooms, they are bigger, and you don’t have that on-the-spot learning, like hands-on, because there are so many people that need to get through in a 45-minute period,” she said. “Here, you have less kids and more time.”

Every day of the camp, students took turns leading icebreakers because 4-H strives to help kids feel comfortable and confident speaking in front of others.

“A big part of 4-H is developing life skills, and so we hope they take away those life skills of teamwork, cooperation,” VonDielingen said. “With a lot of the experiments we did, they’ve had to practice patience and perseverance. They realized technology doesn’t always work right the first time, so you have to persevere.”

She also wants them to apply the concepts they learned into their education and career in the future.

“We hope that they take away not only the science, technology, engineering, art and math concepts but those life skills that they are developing so that will carry them into their future,” VonDielingen said. “We really want to connect them to potential careers in STEM, so that’s part of why I asked Matt to speak to the kids, just getting them to think about their future.”