World Academy is an interdisciplinary program rooted in a yearlong regional study. Each year, students explore one area of the world through the lenses of history, geography, culture, literature, science, and the arts.
Through an integrated, hands-on STEAM approach, students examine the people, places, and events that have shaped the region over time, with a rich emphasis on culture and the humanities. Learning is interactive and project-based, with meaningful arts integration woven throughout. From building ancient tools to creating topographical maps, students gain a deep, contextual understanding of the world through creative and collaborative work.
Hours
Tuesdays - Surprise, AZ - 9:00am - 1:00pm
Thursdays - Goodyear, AZ - 9:00am - 1:00pm
Tuition
Monthly tuition: average of $199/month
One-time registration and materials fee: $110
STEAM Studios is a direct pay ESA vendor.
World Academy
This year’s region of study is Oceania!
World Academy
This year, your child sets sail across the vast and wondrous Pacific, from some of the oldest living cultures on Earth to islands shaped by ocean, story, and song, all explored through the lenses of STEM and the arts. Oceania becomes a place they get to step inside, not just read about.
Your child becomes a history detective, working from real photos, maps, and firsthand accounts like the arrival of Captain Cook. They piece together the Pacific's story and learn to ask how we know what we know.
Here students explore a powerful idea: people shape the land, and the land shapes the people right back. From coral atolls and volcanoes to the Hawaiian ahupuaʻa system, they see how communities and their environment grow together.
Students meet the peoples of Oceania, from Aboriginal Australians and their songlines and dot painting to the many island cultures of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, each with its own way of life.
Picture wayfinders crossing thousands of miles of open ocean. Students follow the Polynesian expansion and the Solomon Islanders' canoe-building and fishing traditions that turned the Pacific into a connected world.
How do communities decide what's fair? Through living examples like Samoa's Faʻa Samoa, children explore leadership, rights, and belonging, and they begin to discover their own voice as citizens.
From fish traps and taro farms to the famous stone money of Yap, students see how Pacific peoples turn the gifts of land and sea into thriving communities, and what it means to use resources with care.
Long before GPS, Pacific peoples read the stars, waves, and wind. Your child studies real tools like the Marshallese stick charts and tries the engineering behind canoes, sails, and ocean navigation firsthand.
Through oral storytelling, song, and art forms like tapa barkcloth, students discover how the peoples of Oceania carry knowledge across generations, and how language keeps a culture's heart beating.
Every culture asks the big questions. From ancient creation stories to the moai of Rapa Nui, children explore the myths, ancestors, and faiths that help Pacific peoples make sense of their world.
Holidays, dress, recreation, and the way people build their homes all come alive as students explore the joyful traditions that connect Pacific families to one another and to the generations before them.
From towering stone figures to ancient sacred grounds, your child explores the landmarks that hold a people's memory, and learns why protecting that heritage matters to all of us.
Oceania's story is the world's story. Students connect the Pacific to bigger ideas like trade, exploration, and caring for our shared planet, and they find their own place in it.
9:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Our goal is simple: to help every child understand the diversity, history, and connections of Oceania's peoples, places, and cultures, and to fall a little in love with the world along the way.