Students at Dartmouth’s elementary schools are building and creating through a new before-school club.

iSTEM was introduced to Dartmouth’s elementary schools last week. The program has already become popular at Potter Elementary School, attracting more than 120 sign-ups for 35 slots.

Every Wednesday, teachers Sandra Chicca and Kate Powers come up with an engineering-themed challenge for the kids to take on. The first session challenged students to create the tallest possible structure with Play-Doh and wooden sticks. The club’s second meeting on January 18 tasked students with designing a maze — using rubber bands, push pins, and cardboard boxes — and guiding a marble through it.

“I’m always impressed that our students always do something different,” Powers said, referring to the variety of maze designs. “They all had different ideas. It’s telling of the creativity of our kids.”

The program encourages students — like Brayden Leary and Justin Correia — to solve problems by experimenting and testing, Chicca said. Leary and Correia had trouble wrapping their rubber bands around the push pins they had laid out for the maze. After unsuccessful attempts to get them to stay, the two came up with a new idea: use a third pin to keep the bands in place.

“It was the only way we could get it to work,” Leary added.

Others, like Emily White, abandoned the rubber bands altogether.

“The elastic was not working so we used push pins instead [to build the maze],” White said.

With another iSTEM session in the rearview, Chicca and Powers are brainstorming ideas for next week's session. Chicca said she starts with a theme, and looks for ways to incorporate it into the classroom. Next week, she is looking into a roller coaster-themed project.