Challenge Island San Diego Central/North

Challenge Island Global

We conduct our classes, workshops, field trips, camps, birthday parties, family fun nights at our partner organizations' sites. Home Island, Challenge Island's virtual classes, workshops, field trips, camps, birthday parties, and enrichment opportunities allow students to experience the magic of Challenge Island in the safety and comfort of home.

Sharon Duke Estroff, award-winning educator, author, and parenting/education journalist, conceived the idea of Challenge Island® while on maternity leave with her fourth child. Maxed out on late-night reruns of a popular reality TV show, she began wondering if the same basic principles (minus the voting and location) could become a means of motivating her students to take on complex higher level thinking tasks. She poured everything she’d learned about children into developing this idea, incorporating cutting edge research and educational thought. By the time her daughter graduated from 3 AM feedings, Challenge Island® was ready for primetime. She started Challenge Island® in her 2nd grade classroom and began running it as an enrichment business in 2003. Since then, Challenge Island® has been growing by leaps and bounds. She had a hunch the business model would work for other parents and teachers. Challenge Island® was launched as a franchise a decade later. Now Challenge Island® is the world’s #1 STEM/STEAM program by Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise 500. With over 100 locations in the USA and abroad, Challenge Island® has touched the lives of over 1 million children in over 6,000 schools and community locations. Challenge Island® is grounded in cutting edge educational thought and at the foundation of S.T.E.A.M Education and 21st Century Learning.

Challenge Island® caught Rebecca Tanag’s attention because of its unique approach to learning: the multi-disciplinary content of the instructional materials; lessons rooted in real-world applications; fun and whimsical hands-on projects that blends science and engineering concepts with arts and crafts; and programming that encourages and fosters collaboration, perseverance, creative thinking and problem solving. The kids learn a lot of things in a fun and exciting way! While Mrs. Tanag’s background is in business, she loved to teach. She had been actively involved in the education ministry of her church for over 10 years and loved working with kids. She brought Challenge Island® to San Diego over 5 years ago and Challenge Island San Diego Central/North has since become one of the acclaimed providers of STEAM-based enrichment program to local schools, libraries, community centers and other sites through after-school classes, field trips, Girl Scouts badge and journey workshops, camps, family science events, birthday parties, and birthday in-class field trips. The Better Business Bureau has given Challenge Island San Diego Central/North accreditation early part of 2020.

Challenge Island is a high-energy, highly engaging hands-on, Standards-aligned, cross-curricular S.T.E.A.M. adventure for K-8 that uniquely intertwines 21st Century Skills, Science, ELA, Math, Problem Solving, History, Social Studies, Engineering, Arts, Geography, Technology, Social-Emotional Learning - in a fun way! Its child-driven approach ensures that every child in every grade is engaged and enriched every step of the way. Challenge Island's Tribe Model creates a climate of acceptance and appreciation while nurturing interpersonal peer to peer skills. 21st century skills-based curriculum fosters creativity, collaboration, cooperation, leadership, flexibility and grit.

Challenge Island offers after-school enrichment classes, in-school field trips, Girls Scouts Badge and Journey workshops, camps (school break and summer), family science events, birthday parties and birthday field trips. A new addition to our program is for adults - the Corporate STEAMbuilding. As the name implies, it is a team-building program.

Students work in collaborative tribes to take on our signature cross-curricular STEM/STEAM challenges using only the materials in their treasure chest and their creativity. They design, build, and test solutions to the challenge working together at each step of the process and solving problems along the way.

Challenge Island is an amazing one-of-a-kind, high-energy, engaging, hands-on, cross- curricular enrichment program that is on the forefront of S.T.E.A.M. education and 21st Century Learning! We take children (and adults) on unique "island" adventures where they work in collaborative tribes to take on various STEM/STEAM challenges using only the materials in their treasure chest and their boundless imaginations! Each Challenge Island challenge appeals to children's natural curiosity and sparks their inherent imagination. Whether you're looking for an after-school program, a pre-school workshop, camp, an in-school field trip, a Girl Scouts workshop, or a company STEAM-building challenges, we're sure to have a program for you! In addition to our regular classes, we also offer BIRTHDAY PARTIES and FAMILY FUN CHALLENGE EVENTS, as well as BIRTHDAY FIELD TRIPS where we come to the school of the birthday celebrant and on his/her behalf invite the whole class for an hour and a half of action-packed adventure and celebration.

Challenge Island program includes: In-school field trips/workshops, after-school enrichment classes, camps, outsourced S.T.E.A.M., family nights, Challenge Island Jr (specifically for pre-Ks where the challenges are scaled down to this age level) and Corporate STEAMbuilding - a team building program for adults.

Visit https://login.challenge-island.com/index.php?action=location&location=26 to see listing of our program and pricing. We accept private bookings (for your class, club, group, etc.) Email us at CISanDiego@challenge-island.com or call us at 858-633-7648 for more information.