New Workshops Nearly Every Week in July

July is here, and we're offering 3 workshops this month to keep kids' brains buzzing this summer.  "Like" us on Facebook to receive updates and more information.  Register for any workshop by commenting on this blog or by posting on Facebook.  Email is fine, too.

More Than A Book Club Session 2   

Mondays, July 2, 9, 16 & 30 (skipping July 23)                           

6:00 to 7:30 p.m.         $150 for all 4.  If you need to miss one, we'll adjust your cost.

Recommended for rising 3rd through 6th grades.

Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie S. Tolan (Newbery Honor Book)

"Will anyone take on Jake Semple?  Jake Semple is notorious. Rumor has it he burned down his old school and got kicked out of every school in his home state.   Only one place will take him now, and that's a home school run by the Applewhites, a chaotic and hilarious family of artists. The only one who doesn't fit the Applewhite mold is E.D.—a smart, sensible girl who immediately clashes with the unruly Jake.   Jake thinks surviving this one will be a breeze . . . but is he really as tough or as bad as he seems?" 

This book especially speaks to those kids who are a little different, who may have some trouble fitting in at school or even within their own families. It's about finding your purpose, passion, and place in the world. Author Stephanie S. Tolan is known not only for her fiction but also for her writings and advocacy in the field of gifted education (Is It a Cheetah?). The sequel to this book is hot off the press. We may take it on if time permits.

More Than A Book Club: No Girls Allowed!                                                                       

Tuesdays, July 3 & 10 from 6 to 8 pm.  Come once for $35 or twice for $60.  Each date is different.  Recommended for rising 1st through 5th grades.

What do boys want? More! More adventure, more silliness, more noise and more humor. So, boys will be boys--but what's wrong with that? Nothing, during No Girls Allowed!

With the help of boy favorites such as Captain Underpants and Shel Silverstein, we'll celebrate all the wonderful things about being a boy.  This is an all-boys class--and fun is the fun, as boys learn that reading is a fun choice!  It's a world where boys get expelled from preschool at nearly five times the rate of girls, are diagnosed with attention problems or learning disorders four times as much as girls, and are twice as likely to get held back.  What's the solution?  Engaging boys in a way that excites them, and closing the expanding gap between the sexes in the areas of reading and writing.

No Girls Allowed! is literacy-rich and filled with boy-friendly activities in the areas of reading, writing, and out-of-the-box thinking.  Paper airplanes will soar and so will your son's imagination!

More Than A Book Club:  GirlPower                                                                                              

Tuesdays,  July 17 & 31  from 6 to 8 pm.  Come once for $35 or twice for $60.  Each date is different.  Recommended for rising 1st through 5th grades.     

Sugar and spice and everything nice . . . come on, girls are so much more than that!  In GirlPower, there are no damsels in distress!  We'll discover smart, daring, and sweet women who have contributed to our world in all sorts of amazing ways.  By these examples girls will see that it's who you are inside and what you contribute that's important -- not how you look or what peers tell you is right for you!   Besides, who says you're not perfect?  That you're not worth it?  We'll improve girls' self-esteem and ability to resist peer pressure through the books we read, the music we listen to, and our own special GirlPower ceremony.

See you there!

Gift

It's hard to believe that, after all these years, I still have it.   A white two pocket portfolio proclaiming, "Welcome to the World of Strawberry Shortcake" and "Have a strawberry day!" 

There's  a piece of yellowed tape still clinging to the top middle with "STORIES" written in green magic marker, in all capital letters.   In the upper right hand corner, where all American children who pay attention in school know to put their names, is my maiden name.

I open the portfolio, or folder as any kid would call it.  On the left side, a much younger Jennifer had written the title "Plays and Other Stories."  On the right side, "Mysteries."   I am greeted by pages and pages of notebook paper, some stapled and some loose, filled with handwriting that is both familiar and unfamiliar to me.  Ink and pencil.   Cursive and manuscript.  Some of it is chicken scratch.  Did I really once make a cursive J like that?

There is a compilation of stories and poems stapled together, complete with a table of contents and a glossary.  These are from second grade.  I can't resist checking the glossary.  I see that the word "all" is defined as:  "Got every one of something." 

There are seven other short stories on the left side, as well as a copy of a play I remember writing while at a friend's house.   Scene 1.  Melanie walks in singing "Merry Christmas."   I remember three of us working together to write the script, practicing our lines, and performing our play for our parents who had just finished a game of Rummy.  I can still smell the Doritos we used to eat during those playdates, which were not called playdates then.  It was just what we did.

On the right side, there are more stories.  These are from fourth and fifth grades.  I remember some of them: "Nothing Means Something," "Nancy and the Mistaken Slippers," and "The Case of the Missing Keys."  I see a very long story, "Goodbye Forever," with a teacher's handwritten note on the first page:  "Be sure to send me an autographed copy of your first novel." 

There is another play, which I remember co-writing with one of my closest childhood friends Julie.  My lines in the play are highlighted in yellow.  The pages are wrinkled, probably from me carrying them around while we practiced.  This play is longer, so we probably worked on it over many sleepovers in between playing Barbies and solving mysteries in the backyard.

There is a booklet with a very nice cover on which I had written in calligraphy,  "All About My Dad."  It is dated Father's Day, age 8, 1983.
 

These pages are not just stories some kid wrote in the 1980s.  These are pages from my childhood.  They are penned by my hands before I knew how to type, before I worried about what others would think, before I wore lipstick.  They allow me to see and hold what I was thinking, feeling, and observing so many years ago.  What a gift to have given my grown-up self!