MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — More families in Florida are choosing to homeschool their children. According to the Florida Department of Education, over 154,000 students were homeschooled in Florida in the 2022-23 school year — a 58% increase since 2018.

Manatee County mother Monica Encarnacion is in the process of opening her own program for homeschooled students. She has been working with different materials like robotics to educate kids through science technology, engineering arts and math, otherwise known as STEAM.

“Kids here can code or program him using just simple drag and drop blocky coding language,” she said as she worked with one of the robots.

Encarnacion has a different approach to education. She says these materials help kids learn problem-solving.

“I would love to use this for homeschoolers,” she said.

It's one of the items she will buy with grant money from the Tiny Fellowship Program. She was awarded $5,500 to kick start her new STEAM program for homeschoolers. At first, she plans on teaching kids in person at their home, but eventually wants to open her own space for kindergarten through eighth graders.

“Ideally, I would love a team of two to three facilitators,” she said. “I’d also love to tap in the volunteers and kids themselves because kids have a lot to teach us; they are experts in technology, and I would love for them to teach the younger kids,” she explained.

During the pandemic, Encarnacion homeschooled her children. She says her teaching experience of 15 years helped her see how STEAM projects help kids learn more effectively.

“I was teaching kids who were learning English; English was not their first language. And now they were able to learn, along with their peers, because of technology,” she noted.

Encarnacion also plans to bring students to local libraries to utilize rooms like this.

“That’s when you bring them in and teach them actual coding language, and that’s when it gets interesting,” she remarked.

Part of the Tiny Fellowship Program is catering towards underserved communities — something Encarnacion is passionate about.

“I know the Latino population of homeschoolers is growing as well, and I’d love to provide resources in Spanish for them,” she explained.

She says she has weekly requirements through the end of May, and then she will seek out investors to launch her STEAM program.

“Kids are not one size fits all; they should not have a one size fits all education, that’s why I’m so motivated to bring something new that really is about the kids and what they want to learn,” she said.

It’s a different way of learning that Encarnacion believes will broaden the horizons of her future students.

Encarnacion’s first pilot for her homeschool program, Homeschool STEAM Fest, will be April 20 and 21 at "The NEST" at Robinson Preserve, free for the public. There will be robots, slime and other activities for kids.