Course Descriptions

The Wonders (and Science) of Nature

Entering Grades 2-3-4
Instructor: Frank Marrero

Love the outdoors? Students will engage their minds and sense of wonder as they are led to explore the natural world. Activities and instruction will be balanced with ecological concepts and guided play. Students will create miniature ecosystems, play habitat games, and act as owls searching for (toothpick) prey. Art projects in nature, using natural objects, will compliment habitat sensitivity and service to our environment. Sharing nature with children is a natural summer odyssey.

Mona Lisa Smile

Entering grades 2-3-4-5
Instructors: Beth Kraft and Libby Silvestri

Calling all artists, scientists, and inventors as we guide you on a journey into the lives and creative minds of innovators such as Leonardo da Vinci, the original Renaissance man. In this class we will be infusing art, science, nature, and imagination into an adventure that will open up the senses and challenge students to see the world through new eyes. Students will explore inventions and expand upon ideas of their own. Through hands-on projects and the use of a variety of art mediums, students will learn about Visuvian man, Fibonacci patterns and numbers in nature, the illusive Mobius strip, and much more. Come with a colorful palate, sketch pad, and a paint brush in hand, ready to play, explore, and discover new worlds.

Note: This class is team-taught for multi-age grouping purposes.

Abracadabra!    

Entering grades 3-4-5
Instructor: Nancy Wilson

Ready to perform some magic?  Join us and learn a whole new bag of tricks.  This magic is a bit different.  Rather than relying on the principles of science to perform magic, we're going to discover the magic in math.  With cards, coins, dice and a calculator, you'll learn all kinds of ways to amaze and astound your friends. Abracadabra!will culminate in a Carnival of Magic, and we'll send you off with your own set of materials (a real bag of tricks) that you can use over and over to amaze and astound the unsuspecting.

IT's Showtime! "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown"

Entering grades 4-5-6
Instructor: Jenny Schmidt

Do you love to act or sing? This is your chance to shine! You'll learn all aspects of putting on a play as we take a script from the page to the stage. Learn how to audition well, how to memorize your lines easily, how to use your voice and body to project a character, and how to bring a scene to life. In addition to rehearsing scenes, we'll be busy making props, sets, and pulling together costumes. On our final day your biggest fans, friends and family will gather in the audience. When the curtain goes up, It's Showtime!

The Art of Problem Solving

Entering grades 4-5-6
Instructor: Ruth Leader

Do you love a creative math challenge? We challenge you to use your brain power and your artistic creativity to problem solve by creating anamorphic art, spiro-graphs, building models, manipulating tiles, experiencing pointillism, playing games, solving puzzles, and drawing geometric designs. These brain stretching activities will allow you to experience math like you have never experienced it before. Bring your skills of persuasion to explain how and why these puzzles work, after having stumped your friends and family! Warning: this is not your everyday math class!

Yes…It IS Rocket Science

Entering grades 5-6-7
Instructor: Ron Pembleton

How would you like to build and launch a real rocket? From paper airplanes to plastic bottle rockets, you will learn the principles of flight and put them into action. When you’ve got it, you’ll construct your own solid-fuel rockets from Estes kits and send them into space. You’ll learn how to determine just how high your rocket could go, and the best way to bring it back. This class is always a real blast!

SMART ART: the art that encourages students to think

Entering grades 5-6-7
Instructor: Victoria Saxe

How would you like to have fun with the kind of art that uses ALL of your brain? The kind of art that makes you think, see, measure, and calculate. Smart Art is just what scientists, architects, animators, and graphic designers are interested in. Any they'll be interested in you, if you learn to think with a pencil. We will create imaginative patterns that dazzle the eye; conquer the illusion of 3-dimensional drawing while exploring the natural world; enter the domain of scientific drawing; learn to draw your room the way an architect would, and in teams create board games. This is the kind of art that could lead you to an unusual career where art, creativity and technology come together.

You Be the Judge!

Entering grades 6-7-8-9
Instructor: Kate McDougall

How would you like to be lead counsel in the Big Bad Wolf ’s criminal trial? Did he eat the bacon or was he framed? Would you like to be the judge? Learn how a real criminal trial operates as we take famous “characters” to court. In this exciting simulation, students will form teams for both the prosecution and defense, act as presiding judges, witnesses and defendants, and serve on juries. Prosecutors and the defense will learn how to offer evidence and how to shape a good argument. Judges and jury will determine how to listen critically for the truth, and everyone will have loads of fun. 

Writing for the Silver Screen

Entering grades 6-7-8-9
Instructor: Peter Gavin

Itching to become a famous screen writer? Are you interested in creating memorable characters and realistic dialogue? What makes certain scripts superior and others forgettable? Discover why some movies grab you from the opening scene, while others are so boring you demand a refund. Learn about dramatic structure, screenplay paradigm, and script format. Discover how to analyze both classic and contemporary films from a screenwriter’s point of view. Who knows, this class may be the launching pad for your Hollywood screenwriting career? Note: as part of the class we will view many scenes and scene sequences from a wide variety of G, PG, and PG-13 movies.

Geometric Art and the Cerebro-Visual Pattern

Entering grades 7-8-9
Instructor: Micah Franks

Witness the beauty in the universe and recreate it using math tools, your artistic taste, and your mind’s desire to see logic and order out of the chaos that surrounds us. We’ll use geometric constructions, origami, collage, and a cornucopia of color to design circular and linear patterns, explore symmetry, reflection, transformation, and isometry. We’ll build 3-dimensional modular origami structures as well as create a frustum, a truncated pyramid, out of nothing more than a circle.