Introduction to 2026 Sustain/Ability Programming
The 2026 Theme for Mezzacello Urban Farm’s Spring and Summer programming will be “Sustain/Ability”. The programming will continue to explore sustainability, energy, ecology, and STEAM-Focused problem solving. We are launching our programming January 10 - 24 at Metro School here in Columbus, OH.
Metro Schools Logo
10 Days / 10 Workshops / 10 Summer Camps
This programming is part of Metro School’s “J-Term” 10-day semester break. I taught there last year and I loved it. So much of my Project SEE summer programming came from there that this year, I am engineering it right into my workshop and summer camp programming. I will be launching signups for that right now.
[Learn More About Our Camps Here]
[Learn More About Project INCA]
Project Innovating Nutrient Capture and Adaptation, Time Traveling, and Storytelling
We start with a social studies experiment and progress to sustainable applied STEAM from there.
What would it look like if we could take our STEM mindset back into time?
How could we positively and thoughtfully influence a period of our history? Could we travel back to the 16th Century meeting between the Incan Empire and the Spanish Empire in Peru? Project Sustain Abilities will explore what the Spaniards, the Incans, and we actually share in common?
ONE | Reframing the Planet and Our Problem
Our planet without her water
In this session, we take a baseline of what the world looks like from all three perspectives:
The Inca
The Spanish
Ourselves
What was the framework of their world? What is the framework of ours? Can we learn from each? We’ll explore the reframing of our world from the edge of space, through the atmosphere, into the biomes and ecologies, to the pedosphere, the hygrosphere, the oceans, the Earth’s crusts, the mantle and finally, the core. We will also explore the important role gradients play in these interconnected stories of our planet and how it shapes our past, our present, and our future.
Activities
Understanding Light - White Light Prism and Reverse White Light
Understanding Electromagnetism - Build a simple Electromagnetic Motor
Understanding Vacuum and Atmosphere - Build a Marshmallow Pressure Chamber
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create a story of the encounter from a unique perspective
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of ecology, economy, geography, geology, industry, and sustainability
Empower learners to begin to explore asking new questions for old answers and enduring problems
Introduce the power of STEAM and Diversity to kids in a fun new way
TWO | Folding, Fixing, and Mixing
Learning How Proteins Fold and How Chemistry Works
In this session, we will explore gradients, solutions, protein folding, biology, and basic chemistry.
What did the Inca know about basic biological processes? Where the Spanish any different? What do we know about the building blocks of life, our blood, disease, and the important role gradients make in all the sciences?
Activities
Understanding Gradients - Managing change in dynamic systems
Understanding Proteins - Create simple protein folding systems that encode data
Understanding pH - Build a universal pH testing system
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create a story about an animal that would exist in all three cultures
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of ecology, economy, geography, geology, industry, and sustainability
Empower learners to begin to explore asking new questions for old answers and enduring problems
Introduce the power of STEAM and Diversity to kids in a fun new way
THREE | Life Under Pressure
Exploring how pressure impacts our world
In this session we will explore pressure in all four of the phases of matter, learn to expect and track changes, and explore the scales that biology uses to determine how life unfolds.
Why is our world teaming with life? How big a role did water play in the city of Machu Pichu in Incan culture? What about at the Alhambra? How can Mezzacello Urban Farm learn from both of these cultures and use our advanced understanding of pressure, engineering, gravity, and our atmosphere, pedosphere, and hygrosphere?
Activities
Understanding Water - Create a Water Purification System
Understanding Engineering - Build a Simple IBC Tank System
Understanding Temperature - Build a Simple Thermometer
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create a marketing idea to promote the benefits of one of these inventions
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of water cycle, the oxygen cycle, and the nitrogen cycle
Empower learners to begin to explore how natural and artificial systems can work in harmony
Introduce temerging STEAM careers to kids in a fun new way
FOUR | Simple Machines and Shelter
A biodome model made with simple machines
In this session, we will explore the basic human needs we all share and what technologies and tools the Inca used and the tools the Spanish used. Do we still use them?
What does nature and OUR environment have to tell us about structures, engineering, shelter, tools, and Applied STEAM in our problem solving and creativity in our 21st-Century world.
Activities
Understanding Simple Machines - Explore the Six Simple Machines
Understanding Dynamic Tension - Build a Biodome
Understanding Angles - Build a Marshmallow Launcher
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create a blueprint diagram of one of the activities
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of structures, engineering, and biology
Empower learners to begin to examine the deep relationship between geometry, shelter, and life
Introduce a system to keep a vulnerable animal safe and happy
FIVE | Why Matter Matters
The nesting dolls of the quantum and empirical worlds
In this session, we will explore how the Inca and the Spanish believed the world was ordered. What do we know today that would shock or scare both cultures?
Starting from pure energy and intention we will progress through the levels of reality through light and electricity and magnetism, the elementary particles, the atoms, molecules, and compounds that establish the lines between organic and inorganic. From there we will explore organs, bodies, ecologies, and how we can use tools, systems, and STEM to better focus our sustainability mission.
Activities
Understanding Quantum Systems - Build Out The Levels of Reality
Understanding Life’s Requirements - Build a Virus Model That Works
Understanding Structure, Pattern, and Process - Build a Flow Diagram
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create a Flow Diagram to Explain How Proteins Are Made
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of life’s Basic Requirements and sustainability
Empower learners to begin to start planning new systems for making diversity accessible
Introduce the difference between equality and equity in a fun new way
SIX | Eco Logic Life
The Law of Sustainability and the logic of eco engineering
In this session, we will explore how every culture must find a way forward to live in the world and stretch their SUSTAIN Abilities. What did the Inca do well? And the Spanish? How can we learn from both and live with nature and an economy?
We need to explore WHY the logic of life is diversity. How does nature leverage diversity to create her webs of life. How can we use that same logic to reframe wicked problems and complexities that will make it easier to support rich ecologies and economies without destruction? What “Abilities” do we need to master to understand sustainability?
Activities
Understanding Terraces - Using a 3D Printed Map of Mezzacello Urban Farm, create a terraced garden
Understanding Fertilizers - Build three simple fertilizers that are balanced for food and micronutrients
Understanding Dynamic Systems - Create a water flow optimization map of Mezzacello’s potager garden
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create a poster explaining why terraces are better optimized by dynamic watering
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of ecology, topology, geology, hydrology, and sustainability
Empower learners to better understand how precious a resource Earth’s water is
Introduce STEAM careers around systems engineering with a WANTED Poster to kids in a fun new way
SEVEN | The Bridges Between Us
In this session, we are going to STRETCH the very definition of BRIDGE almost to the breaking point. Did the Inca use bridges? Did the Spanish? Does a bridge have to be large to be a bridge?
We will explore connections that exist at every level of reality that we exist within. From DNA, to antigens and pathogens, all the way up through body systems, interconnected ecologies, and finally at using our deep knowledge of engineering and science to build new bridges to new ideas that can expand our sustainabilities and our healthy ecologies.
Activities
Understanding Nature’s Data Storage - Build a Gene in DNA
Understanding Genetics - Build a Family Tree of Inca Foods, Spanish Foods, and Our Foods
Understanding Information Theory - Build a Magnetic Hexagon Internet Backbone
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create an HTML Webpage About an Animal From Mezzacello
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of ecology, economy, geography, geology, genetic diversity, and sustainability
Empower learners to begin to understand how nature refactors genes through cultural exchange and evolution
Introduce STEAM Careers in Genetics and Diversity to kids in a fun new way
EIGHT | Magical Molecular Machines
Nature’s perfect molecular machine, Chlorophyll
In this session, we are going to explore the simple machines of the Inca and the Spanish, as well as the many ways that nature creates molecules into active motors at the nanoscale.
What are simple machines? How they were discovered. Are these molecular machines like our six simple machines? Then we’ll build a few models.
Activities
Understanding Respiration - Build a Hemoglobin Model
Understanding Photosynthesis - Build a simple Magnesium and Nitrogen Ion Motor
Understanding Energy Systems - Build a Mitochondritic Motor with Hydrogen Ions
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create a story of life from the perspective of one person’s mitochondria
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of biological systems and sustainability
Empower learners to take better control of their diets and nutrition
Introduce a STEAM powered food pyramid to kids in a fun new way
NINE | Sustainability, Energy, and Ecology
Sustainability, Energy and Ecology
In this session, we are going explore the relationships the Inca and the Spanish had with energy and the way they grew food and what foods they grew, as well as what foods we traded and inherited.
How did the Inca obtain power? And the Spanish? What options are available to us? We will be building a complete solar and LiFePO4 Solar Power system to run iPhones, a Laptop, a projector, and make popcorn.
Activities
Understanding Energy - Create a Complete Solar-Powered Charging Station
Understanding Electromagnetism - Build a simple Battery Charger
Understanding Heat as Light - Create a Resistive Heating Pad
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a Blog Post
Create a Safety First User’s Manual For Wiring a Solar Array to a Battery
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of energy, our environment, renewables, and sustainability
Empower learners to seek new uses of energy capture, harvesting, and reduce use
Introduce the power of STEAM and energy demands to kids in a fun new way
TEN | Life Finds a Way
One of our many gifts from the Inca, The potato
In this session, we are going bring it all back together. It’s time to leave the Incans and the Spaniards with a better understanding of their world and our own.
What are the important takeaways of our time-traveling trip? What were our favorite things we learned or made? How do we better integrate communication, compassion, and diversity into our growing bag of “Sustain | Abilities”?
Activities
Understanding Responsibility -
Understanding Accountability -
Understanding Empathy -
Documentation
Create 30-90 second videos of each project
Create a portal page to all Blog Posts
Prepare a Final Presentation of Learning
Goals
Create a deeper understanding of teamwork, confidence, and sustainability
Empower learners to explore confidence
Introduce the role STEAM plays for kids in a fun new way
Our Summer Programming Flyer
