[Week 02] Morning ProgramsSummer Programs 2023

NOTE: We are still processing all the photos taken this week. We will continue to update this post with more photos as they are uploaded.

 

CREATIVE PROGRAMMING with SCRATCH
In the second week of our Scratch programming class, we learned new tools such as painting and video sensing. Also, we tried to play a real game in the classroom and program it using Scratch. We also collaborated to create a magician character, which was a lot of fun. Each group tried to add their own ideas to the magician. We explored the art features in Scratch and enjoyed painting with them. Lastly, we worked together to make stories using the skills we learned. Overall, it was a enjoyable week where we expanded our programming knowledge and had fun creating games and art.

CREATOR SPACE ADVANCED
This week we learned how to make shrinky-dinks and received enough materials to continue to design more shrinky-dinks for the rest of the program. We completed the group board games we started last week and had time to play them. We also started designing our musubi plushies.

DRAMA: JUST ACT
This is “The Acting Gym,” and like any gym, we push ourselves to add more weights and get stronger. For acting this means using the fundamentals to do scene study faster and better.
THE PROCESS (this was introduced last week, but it is reinforced over and over, as repetition is the mother of skill). First, students must READ the script and understand what is happening. Next, they then need to BREAK DOWN the script. In other words take a pen and section off portions of the scene which have similarities. In doing so, they will write in the margin what their emotion is. This will help them to do the separate sections differently, which will then have a greater chance of looking interesting. They will then rehearse with the understanding that what separates each section from each other are what we term TRANSITIONS. Within the transitions are usually our pauses, when we change up our delivery. Why do we want to change? “More of different things is generally better than more of the same.” At all times, they are constantly told to utilize the THREE FORMS OF ACTING and AVOID PATTERNS in order to look natural as an actor. And, as a generality, if you master the transitions, you master the scene. As far as scenes actors will perform at least two scenes, “The Sea Spirit,” and “We Bought A Zoo.” Some will do monologues, “The Verdict,” and “Fefu And Her Friends.” If they get through these scenes faster, I will assign them new scenes. We will also continue working on developing our original play.

HNS: EXPLORERS
This week, Explorers finished up learning all about the parts of a plant and played jeopardy to review their new found knowledge. We also began our biodiversity subunit for this week where we focused on learning all about insects, pollinators, and their relationship to plant life. On Wednesday, we had two awesome guest speakers from the Pa‘ēpa‘ē O Waikolu Program to teach the students all about the wonderful biodiversity in Hawai’i and especially in Manoa stream in order to prepare us for our next field trip to the Manoa Marketplace Stream Site for next week.

HNS: OBSERVERS
This week we are focusing on arthropods! This started off Tuesday with a visit to the UH Insect Museum. Children saw specimens of native bees, dragon flies and butterflies, as well as species from around the world. On our way back, we visited the Japanese Garden and saw koi fish, lots of tadpoles, and looked for crayfish. Wednesday we had guest speakers from the Pa‘ēpa‘ē O Waikolu Program who taught about the native stream fish, shrimp, and snails. They also had the children practice in teams to be able to catch the invasive fish and remove them from the stream for our upcoming field trip. Thursday the children planted seeds, and Friday they did a craft on the life cycle of butterflies.

HNS: RESEARCHERS
This week our Researchers explored local plants, especially the ones in the gardens around our campus. In addition to that we became stream experts as we learned about native and invasive species found in our streams from our Pa‘ēpa‘ē O Waikolu Program guest speakers. On Thursday, were able to help to remove some of the invasive species from one of our local streams and learn more about how that will help our native species thrive.

LET’S PLAY SPORTS
In week two of Let’s Play Sports we focused on soccer. We began the week by learning the fundamentals such as passing, dribbling, and shooting. In addition, we highlighted the importance of working together as a team and proper sportsmanship.

LITTLE JOURNALISTS
This week the Little Journalists practiced their camera skills, taking photos of animate and inanimate subjects. They also continued their work covering other Summer Programs classes, building their interviewing chops on both in-person and online interviews.

STEM: DISCOVERY
This week our students spent time working together in groups to complete different STEM challenges with a limited amount of time and supplies. Students worked together to create the tallest spaghetti tower, tallest marshmallow tower, longest paper chain, and build foil boats to see how many pennies it could hold. These challenges encouraged students use their critical thinking skills to figure out how to utilize supplies wisely and to work together to complete the task as best as they could.

We also took time to create something special for Father’s Day. Students were able to use recycled materials to create a toolbox. The toolboxes needed to have a handle and be able to hold their “tools.” On their tools, students wrote some fun and sweet things about their dads. They worked so hard on these gifts for their dads and hope they enjoy their toolboxes! 🙂

STEM: SCIENCE OLYMPICS
This week students worked on building, modifying, and testing different launchers such as catapults, slingshots, ramps, and airplane launchers! Students then competed in friendly competitions for each launcher which included accuracy and distance.