Experience a Keystone Summer!
Participate in enriching activities while experiencing the Keystone culture—a supportive,
inclusive environment that fosters academic excellence, ethical growth, community
involvement, and responsible leadership.
Open to rising fifth- to rising tenth-graders, Keystone School will host three summer camps this year:
two one-week camps sponsored by the Hill Country Science Mill and one two-week camp sponsored by
Keystone School. All three camps run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Before- and after-session care will be
available from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at no extra cost.
An initial payment of $150 is required at the time of registration. Full payment is due by Wednesday,
May 31.
Hill Country Science Mill STEM Squad at Keystone School, June 19-23
Cost: $350.00
Join the STEM Squad and become a scientist, engineer and programmer of the future! Dive into the
adventure of a different STEM career each day as you explore the world of microbes with a microscope
you build and take home, investigate clues to solve a crime, program robots to complete crazy
challenges, and discover the wonders of e-textiles! Let the engineering design process be your guide as
you have a fun and exciting adventure while creating and designing solutions to real-world problems.
Hill Country Science Mill Tech Takeover, June 26-30
Cost: $350.00
Discover your tech potential through programming, engineering, robotics and much more with this
technology centered camp! Let your own creativity guide you as you play with Arduino microcontrollers
and create inventive solutions throughout the week. Program cool robots to dance, light up, play a tune,
and more! Design interactive stories and games with Scratch, be amazed as your keyboard comes to life,
and show off your problem solving skills in team-based challenges!
Keystone Summer Program, July 10-21
Cost: $700.00
During the two weeks, students will become part of a community of learners as they participate in group
activities and attend three small-group sessions of their choice. We are committed to a small
teacher/student ratio, so please indicate your child’s first and second preferences for each time slot:
Morning, Early Afternoon, and Late Afternoon. Keystone School reserves the right to modify the
schedule if needed.
Morning Sessions
Writing Workshop
Sharpen your craft as a poet, playwright, essayist, or short story writer as you participate in
targeted mini lessons and confer with peers and teachers. You may come with writing in
progress, or you may generate your ideas during the session. Whether you love to write or
simply wish to become a better writer, this session is for you. Because lessons and strategies
differ each summer, former participants are welcome. All instructors have advanced training in
the teaching of writing.
Community Theater: A Tribute to San Antonio’s Military Heroes
Write, perform, and direct monologues and short scenes that capture the lives of veterans from
the San Antonio Army Residence Center. Students will interview veterans who will share their
experiences rescuing survivors during the Nazi blitz in Hungary, airlifting individuals from the
American Embassy in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War, and serving our country in many
other ways. Veterans will be invited to the culminating performance on July 21.
Newbery Shorts
The 90-Second Newbery Film Festival is an annual video contest in which young filmmakers
create short movies that tell the entire stories of Newbery-winning books in about a minute and
a half. San Antonio hosts a screening each year along with festival founder James
Kennedy (author of the young-adult fantasy The Order of Odd-Fish) and other award-winning
children’s authors. Participants in this session will create a storyboard, compose a script, act,
direct, and edit a video for this year’s competition. Students will need to have read a Newbery
award winning book. A list of these books will be available in advance of the session.
Adventures in Robotics/Fire Scene Investigation (limited to ten students)
Adventures in Robotics: Learn to build and program robots using the Lego EV3 robotics kit. Each day
students will work together to solve different challenges by programming and running their
robots. The course will culminate in a “Battle Bots” competition.
F.S.I. (Fire Scene Investigation): The year is 2037 and NASA has established a lunar outpost to enable
lunar and Martian exploration, mining and astronomical observations of deep space. Our astronaut
crew at this lunar outpost routinely checks each module on the base. During a routine check to
record thermal data on one of the storage units, an astronaut detects a fire in progress! Work with a
team to determine the cause of the fire and to make recommendations for fire suppression on the
moon. The Communications Specialists report all information to Mission Control during this live
simulation.
The Universe/Fire Scene Investigation
The Universe: Explore the scale of the universe from the smallest sub-atomic particle to the entire
known universe—and many things in between—during this week of investigation and
experimentation. Put on your lab coat and enter the realm of science!
F.S.I. (Fire Scene Investigation): The year is 2037 and NASA has established a lunar outpost to enable
lunar and Martian exploration, mining and astronomical observations of deep space. Our astronaut
crew at this lunar outpost routinely checks each module on the base. During a routine check to
record thermal data on one of the storage units, an astronaut detects a fire in progress! Work with a
team to determine the cause of the fire and to make recommendations for fire suppression on the
moon. The Communications Specialists report all information to Mission Control during this live
simulation.
Early-Afternoon Sessions
“Two Can Play at that Game!”
With crowd-funding, independent board games are an exploding, emerging market for modern
entrepreneurs. Over the course of two weeks, students in this program will design and
implement a new, playable game that could be the next million-dollar idea. During this process,
students will also gain insight into the basic tenets of game theory and object-oriented
programming concepts.
Keystone School of Rock
Let’s rock! Whether you want to hone your skills on an instrument you already know or
challenge yourself to play a new one, your enthusiasm is all you need. This fast-paced class
will focus on vocal/instrumental performance. This workshop will combine free styling
on instruments you already know with ukulele instruction for an exciting “rock”
band experience.
Image Making
According to author William Faulkner, “The goal of every artist [and poet] is to arrest motion . . .
and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it
is life.” In this session, we will work with exercises designed to generate ideas for image-based
poems that will be incorporated into a journal we create using mixed-media techniques.
Ultimately, you will produce and keep an artistic journal in which you intertwine your text with
visual imagery.
The Four-Legged Members of Our Community Need a Voice!
And you can provide that voice this summer! Work on a special advertising promotion for the
San Antonio Food Bank and DaisyCares to share the ways these organizations help families and
individuals facing economic hardship care for and keep their pets. You and your advertising
team will brainstorm, storyboard, and create a compelling campaign that could actually be
implemented.
Late-Afternoon Sessions
CyberSurgeons (open to rising eighth, ninth, and tenth graders only)
Students become a rapid response trauma team aboard a Mercy ship traveling up the Amazon.
The emergency specialists will use a state-of-the–art, high-tech medical interface to triage a
wide range of patient ailments The goal during this scenario is to accurately diagnose patients,
order needed tests, interpret test results and assign appropriate treatment as well as assign
suitable NIH clinical trials to as many patients as possible during a shift. Students will work
collaboratively with a chief medical officer at the Challenger Learning Center in hopes of saving
the lives of the native population and medical research personnel in the rainforests of Brazil.
Imagine, Create, and Animate!
This extraordinary workshop will provide participants with an in-depth experience into the
world of animation. Using the stop motion/claymation process, you will learn how to
storyboard, animate, and edit a film of your very own. Come ready to make your lunch dance
across the screen, to bring your favorite toy to life, to design and animate original characters,
and to ultimately turn your imagination into a reality. The possibilities are endless!
MineQuest/Magnificently Magical yet Malevolently Maddening Mathematics
MineQuest: Take your Minecraft game to the next level by creating quests inside a Minecraft
world. Learn how to turn a regular Minecraft world into a playable adventure by adding nonplayable characters that will interact with human game players. If you are ready to learn how to
create your own Minecraft adventure video game, then this session is for you.
Magnificently Magical yet Malevolently Maddening Mathematics: Each day we will explore an
amazing mathematical problem (The Bridges of Konigsberg problem, the Monty Hall problem, the
Riddle of the Sphynx, and Towers of Hanoi), and then we will create, share, and solve related
problems that will make your head spin – in a fun sort of way!
MineQuest/From Hollywood to Bollywood
MineQuest: Take your Minecraft game to the next level by creating quests inside a Minecraft
world. Learn how to turn a regular Minecraft world into a playable adventure by adding nonplayable characters that will interact with human game players. If you are ready to learn how to
create your own Minecraft adventure video game, then this session is for you.
From Hollywood to Bollywood: Some of the best dances in the cinema come from the most
unusual movies. Do you remember 13 Going on 30s version of “Thriller”? How about the bootstomping dance in “Footloose”? Come and learn these and other dances such as “Hand Jive” from
Grease, “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire, and A Chorus Line’s audition dance. Enthusiasm (not
experience) is required.
Writing for Contests/Magnificently Magical yet Malevolently Maddening Mathematics
Writing for Contests: Learn about the myriad contest and publishing opportunities available to
students. Take this opportunity to draft and polish entries with feedback from peers and skilled
teachers so that you have submissions ready when the contest or call for manuscripts opens.
Magnificently Magical yet Malevolently Maddening Mathematics: Each day we will explore an
amazing mathematical problem (The Bridges of Konigsberg problem, the Monty Hall problem, the
Riddle of the Sphynx, and Towers of Hanoi), and then we will create, share, and solve related
problems that will make your head spin – in a fun sort of way!
Writing for Contests/From Hollywood to Bollywood
Writing for Contests: Learn about the myriad contest and publishing opportunities available to
students. Take this opportunity to draft and polish entries with feedback from peers and skilled
teachers so that you have submissions ready when the contest or call for manuscripts opens.
From Hollywood to Bollywood: Some of the best dances in the cinema come from the most
unusual movies. Do you remember 13 Going on 30s version of “Thriller”? How about the bootstomping dance in “Footloose”? Come and learn these and other dances such as “Hand Jive” from
Grease, “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire, and A Chorus Line’s audition dance. Enthusiasm (not
experience) is required.