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Zone 8 · steamHouse Ecosystem
The Community
Everything else is grounded here: in a real community, with real families, running real programs in Golden, Colorado for 8+ years. The Fairmount steamHouse is the proof of concept — every principle, every framework, every curriculum piece has been tested in the context of actual Saturday mornings with actual kids.
Built & complete
Drafted or outlined
Designed, not yet built
Documentation
Zone 8 is the most documentation-sparse zone. The programs are real and running — 8+ years, real families, real results — but the event-specific pedagogy lives primarily in institutional knowledge rather than standalone documents. The three gaps above are genuine priorities.
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2026 Event Calendar — all dates confirmedEvery 2026 program date confirmed with school district and university coordination context.
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Club Startup GuideCovers event structure, rhythm, and culture as part of the full Club model — the most complete single document for how the community program runs.
CLOP_Club_Startup_Guide.md✓
Manual — age-differentiated programming for all eventsThe four Manual volumes contain the pedagogical backbone for all Club programming — what to do with participants at each developmental stage.
MANUAL_VOLUME_I–III · MANL_Vol_IV○
Event Design Handbook — not yet createdA standalone document capturing the specific pedagogy behind each annual event: why Snakes Day develops the automatic/conscious distinction, why SuperHarvest is a teamwork-under-pressure exercise, why the Gourd Gala is a recognition ceremony. The design logic exists in institutional knowledge; it hasn't been written down yet.
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Competition Program Guide — not yet createdHow steamHouse uses FLL, DI, and 4-H as development contexts — the specific overlay practices for each competition program, and what mentors do differently in competition settings.
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Season Recap Template — not yet createdA standard template for documenting each year's program — what happened, what was observed developmentally, what to carry forward. Would create institutional memory and eventually a multi-year dataset.
Annual Events 2026
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Round the World in Eats — Feb 21International food and culture celebration — community bonding, perspective-taking, supertribe in practice.
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Game Night — Mar 7Cooperative and strategic games as a development context — ORLO and other designed-play experiences.
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Beehive Installation — Apr 25 (modified format)The spring anchor event — beekeeping as a lesson in ecological interdependence and patient observation. Modified format in 2026.
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Snakes and Toed Beasts Day — May 30Live reptile encounter day — fear-facing, automatic response vs. conscious choice, the mismatch made tangible.
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Post-School Workshop — Jun 13Transition-week workshop for participants finishing the school year — bridging institutional learning to steamHouse mode.
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Summer Intensive Week — Jun 22–26Five-day immersive program — the highest-density development week of the year. Curriculum, projects, community, reflection.
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Robotics Camp — Aug 3–7Five-day pre-season camp — team formation, technical skill-building, steamHouse framework in an engineering context.
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Robotics Team Kickoff — Aug 23FLL season launch — challenge reveal, initial brainstorming, team commitments.
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SuperHarvest Mission — Sep 26Annual harvest event — food systems, collective labor, the satisfaction of tangible production.
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Gourd Gala — Oct 23Year-end celebration and recognition ceremony — showcasing growth, honoring effort, community gathering.
Competition Programs — year-round development contexts
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FIRST Lego League (FLL) — RoboticsSeptember through February. Engineering challenge + community project + core values rubric. The most demanding and most developmentally rich of the competition programs.
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Destination Imagination (DI)September through May. Creative problem-solving competition — team-based, open-ended, no adult coaching allowed during solution development.
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4-H (year-round)Project-based learning across a wide range of domains — the broadest context for the steamHouse overlay, and the one most participants already belong to.