Enrichment Pods

Children who demonstrate intellectual abilities above their peers benefit enormously academically, socially, and emotionally when exposed to challenging, accelerated, and enriching curricula. Our program focuses on out-of-the-box thinking. Children will engage in various critical thinking and creative problem solving activities. Our goal is to challenge our students to reach their highest potential. Say goodbye to boredom for your gifted child.

Learn the dramatic arts online from passionate theatre teachers. Our goal is to teach, inspire, and build confidence in our students so they have an appreciation of the arts and an understanding of themselves and their own creativity.

Lego-lovers will learn tips and secrets to create masterpieces! Construction toys, such as Legos, advance the development of spatial skills. In addition, playing with legos helps children develop problem-solving skills as they go through the trial and error of putting pieces together in order to construct a specific shape or object. It is a foundation for increased understanding and success in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) areas.

In this course, your children will challenge their brains and have fun while learning about the math involved with fun activities like magic squares, puzzles and riddles. We will explore, discover and enjoy solving math puzzles, riddles and optical illusion problems. We will also solve encrypted math puzzles, in which numbers are replaced by letters or symbols. By the end of this course, your child will have learned and practiced problem-solving techniques that will boost his/her creative and deductive thinking skills, all while having a good time! Looking forward to working with you!

Science lab experiments allow students to ask questions, probe for answers, conduct investigations, and collect data. Rather than simply learning science through textbooks in classrooms, students are engaged in the investigative nature of scientific learning in science labs.

Have your child escape with a good story and join us for our summer book club! During this time, we will take a journey through amazing books. Each week, there will be a new theme and fun activities to follow with the books we read. Bring a yummy snack (nut free, of course). We will talk about characters, setting, and plot. We will discuss problems the characters faced and how they were solved. We will dig deeper and compare the text we are reading to other texts, to ourselves, and the world we live in. Your child is welcome to share his/her favorite book with the group. This is a great way to socialize, have fun, and build reading skills this summer!

Chess is an entertaining game that incorporates aspects of creativity, observation, intellect, and strategy for students who are knowledgeable, inquirers, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, risk-takers, intuitive, patient and reflective. This chess class is meant to foster intellectual growth while having fun and learning how to play at a myriad of levels. Come play chess with us!

Programming, or coding, is one of the fastest growing areas in technology today! Coding allows children to provide instructions for computers to follow. Learning how to code provides them with the foundations in logic, computational thinking and programming “languages.” These STEM skills are invaluable in today’s technology driven world. In this beginner’s course, we will use free resources like Scratch to explore block coding. We will also complete various activities like learning how to develop interactive stories, animations and even games! (No previous coding experience is needed.)

Exposing a child to a foreign language as early as three years old will result in easier and better fluency. At this age, children's brains are like sponges and they are developmentally ready to accept and learn a foreign language rapidly and without accent. Research shows there are many benefits from learning a second language at a young age. These benefits include better problem solving skills, more creativity, enhanced memory, and better multi-tasking abilities. During this enrichment program, your child will learn to speak and understand either Italian, French, or Spanish through fun activities! We will use music, games and read traditional stories, which your child is sure to enjoy! Your child will learn the language through repetition, via a progression of activities each week. Make sure to reserve a spot today!

Does your child have stories to tell, but struggles with putting pen to paper? Or does your child love writing creatively and want to improve his/her writing skills? …..Well, I can help your child find his/her inner writer. In creative writing, we will work together to create fun and unique pieces. Your child will get to participate in writing stories, poetry, plays, songs, and many more. We will work together to create and explore the various genres of writing. We will work on the five stages of writing: 1. brainstorming, 2. writing, 3. revising, 4. editing, and finally 5. publishing. Have your child join and get ready to collaborate and write! I look forward to sharing our writing pieces with the group!

Meditation is a proven practice to reduce anxiety and tension. The Academic Success Meditation program brings meditation into the Homework Hub. Kristen McDermott and Michelle Anglisano, co-owners of The Zen Den and veteran Special Education teachers, created this program to teach children simple and effective meditation and breathing practices to help them manage academic stress. At the conclusion of the class, your child will have new “tools” in their “backpacks of success” to boost their mental focus in order to grasp educational concepts, learn new ways to engage with teachers with a more positive mindset and understand how breathing can reduce test stress. Having your child learn specific strategies to increase their academic success, will boost their self-esteem academically, personally & socially.

Individual signs are relatively easy to learn. Like any spoken language, ASL is a language with its own unique rules of grammar and syntax. Learn enough signs for basic communication. The rewards will be well worth the effort!

Learning keyboarding skills and techniques is essential in today’s technology driven world. With the increase in online learning, students must be able to type in order to successfully participate in this kind of learning. In this course, your child will be taught how to type quickly and accurately. This will include typing without looking at the keyboard, and increasing the number of words typed per minute. They will also learn proper technique and good habits. Poor keyboarding habits and techniques, such as hunt and peck, are incredibly difficult to overcome after they have been used for many years. Strong keyboarding skills allow for ease in word processing, which is an essential skill for a child’s academic career and eventual job placement.

It's an adventure making summer reading fun. Have your child join the adventure as we use the book he/she picks from the school's summer reading list to explore and discuss various literary topics including style, theme, setting, mood, plot, and characterization. We will debate the assortment of social and historical connections to our world and current events. Questioning the text and the author will validate your child's personal views. By the end of the course, your child will have read the assigned book, completed his/her designated assignment, and/or created a potential extra credit assignment. As each student analyzes the text, he/she will gain insight into other novels. Bring a yummy snack (nut free, of course). This is a fun, new way of tackling summer reading!

Cover the basics of public speaking with us! We will explore media training, acting, speaking on camera, presentation design, and much more. Whether your child is just getting started with public speaking, or wants to improve his/her communication skills, this class will focus on body language, confidence, voice improvement and presentation skills.

In this class, your child will learn more about the tools and features available in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. He/She will learn how to create professional-looking documents and presentations to wow their teachers and classmates next school year. In this enrichment course, your child will learn how to utilize the features of both of these Microsoft Office programs to create, customize, and enhance both types of files. He/She will tackle real world scenarios and challenges with publishing documents and delivering presentations. English Language Arts, keyboarding, and research skills, as well as business protocol, will also be reinforced within these projects. Your child will need to have a device that contains Microsoft Office Suite 2010 or later.

Online learning has introduced the world of G Suite to many classrooms. If your child would like to learn how to use Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawings as well as other G Suite features to enhance, customize, and create professional and impressive documents, presentations, and projects, this is the enrichment course for him/her. We will explore the collaborative features of each G Suite project as we tackle real world tasks that your child may experience inside the classroom and in his/her future career. English Language Arts, keyboarding, and research skills, as well as business protocol, will also be reinforced within these projects. Please be sure your child has a device that contains the Chrome Web Browser (this can be downloaded for free from the Internet).

In this course, your child will be learning the things that late teens and young adults need to know to navigate life and be successful. We will discuss important everyday skills needed to live independently. At the end of this course, they will have the confidence and knowledge to be more self sufficient.

Topics we will cover:

Banking :

-Writing a Check/Balancing a Checkbook

-Online Banking

Insurance:

Health, Car, Home, Life

Loans:

Student, Car, Home/Mortgage

Credit Cards:

-Establishing Good Credit

-Personal Financing

-Budgeting

-Responsible Spending

Taxes:

-Payroll

-Local

-Property

-Federal

Housing:

-Security Deposits

-Leases

Sign language is a visual language primarily used to communicate with people who are deaf or hard of hearing. It utilizes hand gestures, facial expressions, and body movements to convey meaning, rather than spoken words.