We’ve had a bunch of great after-school classes happening this semester, and the girls are doing tons of amazing projects. Here, our after-school instructors give us some of the highlights!
Hewitt School
Zine Scene with Ingrid- The Zine Scene class at the Hewitt School has reached their publication date! This semester, the girls worked to produce a Curious Jane mini-magazine, entitled Sweet ‘N’ Sour Mashup, featuring “Ask Ally,” a fictional social advice column, real-life interviews with women business owners, a random interviews section called “Weekly What?” and more! Inspired by storytelling, comedy, fashion, music, and popular trends, these young ladies showed off their diverse creative skills! To get your copy, download the PDF here!
Toy Design with Emily- In this after school class the girls have learned to design their own toys and ways to implement their designs to create works that show off their unique personalities and interests. This semester, girls have created their own Toy Companies, and each project they made connects together through their company. They’ve made mini-environments, stuffed monsters, Sculpey toy sets, paper block sets, and many more awesome things!
PS 154
Lab Science with Virginia- This is an incredibly enthusiastic and curious group of ladies! For the first few weeks, we explored chemistry by experimenting with mysterious substances like Oobleck. Then we moved on to biology. The girls have explored the idea of Natural Selection by coming up with their own creatures and building them with Sculpey. Each week they fill their science notebooks with tons of questions for me ranging from, “Is there something outside of outer space?” to “Why do we have hair?” which will help me plan future lessons around their interests.
Lab Science Jr. with Cara- The kindergarteners in this class has been doing such a great job over the last few weeks, I am truly impressed. The girls have been really enthusiastic about science, which of course makes it even more fun for me to teach them! We started off learning about and working with the scientific method. We learned about polymers by experimenting with insta snow and water gel. Then, we had Slime Olympics where they got to make Glow-in-the-Dark slime, and Oobleck! We started our biology section by learning about plants through flower dissections, and Food Chains through dissecting owl pellets. I look forward to working with the girls for the upcoming weeks as we tackle different experiments involving CANDY!
PS 107
Toy Design with Virginia- I have two different fantastic groups of kindergartens at 107, all with very big imaginations. Some of our projects have included character masks, musical instruments, and Spoon Puppets. Last week, each group had names and voices for their puppets, and they all began to speak to each other by the end class. We had superheroes, princesses, and several very tough ninjas!
Berkeley Carroll
Animal Nature with Emily- We have all had so much fun so far this semester in Animal Nature! We have studied the metamorphosis of caterpillars to butterflies and tad-poles to frogs. We have created works of art and also mad scientist experiments, all in order to help us learn more about our natural habitat while having tons of fun! We have a bunch more projects left to do, and not one is less exciting than another… but the one about fireflies is going to light up!
PS 6 Lunch Clubs
Toy Design with Virginia- The best project I’ve done so far with this group was the mini-environment. I saw some brand new versions of this project with spider webs, the Land of Sweets from The Nutcracker, and a very elaborate playground. We focused on seeing all our projects as works of art and talked about focal points, foregrounds, and backgrounds.
PS 158
Toy Design with Bells and Whistles with Cara and Virginia- We have been having a crazy and wonderful time with this gang! We started off our class with Environments and then magnetic creatures with a light-up feature. We have incorporated the science of electricity and magnetism as well as character building theater games to merge concepts from Toy Design and Electronics, and have continued to explore electricity with mini-bots and light-up castles!
