KES Early Explorers is a hands-on outdoor STEAM summer camp for ages 4-7 designed to build confidence, curiosity, and connection through movement and exploration.

Students participate in movement activities, outdoor exploration, simple engineering challenges, environmental learning, and guided recreation experiences that build toward each featured activity.

Each workshop focuses on different parts of the experience. Some sessions are movement-based, while others explore geology, biology, climbing gear, rafting, or environmental exploration.

By the end of the week, students are not just participating in activities—they begin to form big questions about how outdoor recreation is made possible through these connected systems.

Morning hikes and outdoor exploration are incorporated throughout the program, and conclude with an outdoor activity they spent all week learning about!

This structure ensures students engage with all five Escalera Academy learning environments:

• Gear Investigation Units

• Gear Design Units

• Field Investigation Units

• Human Performance Units

• Traditional STEM Unit

KES (Kinesiology, Engineering, Sustainability)

KES is a systems-based STEAM outdoor education framework that uses recreation and outdoor environments as the applied context for learning. It connects classroom concepts to real-world experiences where students actively engage with science, human movement, and environmental systems through structured, hands-on instruction.

At its core, KES integrates three interconnected lenses:

• Kinesiology — human movement, biomechanics, performance, and injury prevention in real-world activity

• Engineering — the design, function, and mechanics of outdoor gear and recreation systems

• Sustainability — environmental impact, resource use, and long-term stewardship of natural spaces

Rather than teaching these areas as separate subjects, KES brings them together as one unified system. Students learn to understand how movement, equipment, and environment continuously interact in outdoor settings such as climbing, hiking, navigation, and exploration.

KES blends classroom learning with field-based application, integrating disciplines such as biology, geology, environmental science, and physical education. Each learning experience is anchored in a real-world activity, allowing students to apply concepts in motion, in context, and in real time.

The result is a learning model where students do not simply study systems—they experience and analyze them as they occur.

Every program is built around a featured outdoor activity such as climbing, rafting, skiing, etc. These experiences serve as living classrooms where students connect academic concepts to real-world systems.

Our programs are designed to be interdisciplinary, experiential, and applied.

Our Approach

KES is built on the belief that meaningful learning happens when students can see, do, and understand simultaneously. By combining structured instruction with real-world application, KES creates learning environments where knowledge is active, embodied, and transferable.

This approach prepares students to think critically, move intentionally, and understand how human, engineered, and environmental systems work together in the world around them.