Don’t forget to sign your child up for Vaca-Playdays!  April 22-25

WHEN:  May 21, 2014 6:00-6:30 pizza and socializing,

6:30-8:30 Mia will present her workshop

ENGINEERING A STORY

WHO:  LEAP staff and the Lincoln community

Babysitting will be available here at LEAP.

Please sign up by May 16, 2014

Engineering a Story*

The Engineering a Story is a great program to engage PK-8 teachers in the integrative nature of STEM. Designed specifically for educators of all subjects, this workshop offers a hands-on approach to weaving together literacy with engineering practices & thinking skills. The collection of methods presented in the program leads to an enriched literary experience coupled with a gain of engineering concepts. The program is aligned with the Common Core and the NGSS.

Tentative agenda (two-hour workshop)

Introduction to engineering

• Why teach engineering practices?
• The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and engineering practices
• What do engineers do? How to establish positive messaging about engineers?
• The engineering design process, make it your own!

Engineering a story

• Identify problems in a children’s book
• The brainstorming process
• Categorizing solutions
• Defining constraints and choosing solutions
• Sharing solutions and providing feedback to other teams

Closing

• Modifications for engineering stories in after school and informal settings
• Ideas from other teachers/parents

* This program is an adaptation of Engineering Lens, a program created by Bill Wolfson http://www.integratingengineering.org/

Mia Dubosarsky – Bio

Mia Dubosarsky is the Director of Professional Development at WPI’s STEM Education Center. In her role she develops and conducts STEM themed professional development programs for a variety of audiences: from preschool teachers learning how to integrate engineering practices with literacy, to school district principals and superintendents working to develop a strategic plan for integrating STEM into their districts. Mia also serves as an adjunct faculty at Lesley University’s Science in Education program, teaching a course titled Assessment for Learning in the Science Classroom.

Prior to her work at the WPI and Lesley, Mia was part of a team who worked to support teachers from a Native American Reservation in developing culturally based science and math activities.

In her earlier years as a science educator Mia founded and managed for seven years a science enrichment enterprise to which she developed a two-year program comprised of science stories, games and experiments. She was appointed by the Israeli Ministry of Education to design the science program for an Art & Science center for elementary school children.

Mia received a BA in Biology from Israel’s Institute of Technology (Technion) and a doctorate in Curriculum & Instruction (science education) from the University of Minnesota.

                    Sign up NOW! 

This vacation our theme is… Community

Kids can come for one, two, three or all four days from 8 to 4 p.m. We will be picnicking at Pierce Park, checking out the vernal pools around campus, planting flowers, tie dying t-shirts, playing sports of all types…ENJOYING THE SPRING TOGETHER!

Who:

Kids in grades K-5 who want to get out of the house and have a great time with friends in a relaxed, fun-filled environment!

When:

8 am – 4 pm

Tues., April 22- Fri, April 25

Sign up for 1, 2, 3 or 4 days!                              

Cost:

4 Days: $275 per child ****** 3 Days: $225 per child ****** 2 Days: $175 per child****1 Day $95 per child

Where:

LEAP building (Pod C) in the Hartwell Complex

Want to sign up? Download Registration & all required forms at:

www.lincolnrec.com

Have questions? Call Katie at LEAP 781-259-0615

We are looking for parent volunteers to help spruce up the outside of LEAP.  We will begin working on the garden in front of LEAP and would love some of your creative ideas!

Einstein’s Workshop and LEAP will be offering a Lego Robotics class for grades 1-3.  This class will run on Wednesday afternoons from 2pm-3pm, for 6 weeks.  There will be a maximum class size of 12 kids, please let us know if your child will be interested.  Price will be $75

Session starts May 7 through June 11.

Students will investigate motorized models with Lego WeDo. They will learn about gears, belts, motors, sensors, and basic programming. After building each model, students will be given challenges that may include controlling the model with sensors and a program, or modifying the model to accomplish specific goals. These challenges will exercise their creativity and problem solving skills in addition to improving their understanding of how the machines work.

In our last post, we talked about the phone guy coming to visit LEAP on April 2, but he was sick that day, so now he’s coming on April 9, 2014.

On Wednesday, April 2, we’ll welcome Vincent Valentine, the “Phone Guy.” Vincent is an electrical engineer with 30 years of experience in the semiconductor and securities industries. Vincent has been collecting telephones since he was 8 years old starting with a lineman’s butt set. It was his insatiable curiosity about how telephones worked that inspired him to become an electrical engineer. He graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 1981 with a BSEET. After graduation, he moved to Massachusetts, where he worked for several companies including, GTE, GCA, Raytheon, and Millipore. He has been a Lincoln resident for 20 years.

Vincent believes that because today’s smartphones can’t be taken apart like an old analog phone,  kids are missing something very special that happens when you take stuff apart. Vincent recreates this inspirational experience with great success through “telephone workshops” where telephones are taken apart and children learn about Ohm’s Law.

Also happening at LEAP

• Liz Wilkinson has been working with kindergarteners and first-graders on their Spanish. They’ve been learning so much! Thank you Liz, for giving your time!
• Book Buddies continues to be a hit with the Magic Garden preschoolers. Every Tuesday we send four of our LEAP kids up to Magic Garden, where our kids read, sing or tell jokes to the preschoolers.
• Scratch computer programing class is going well, and the kids are very excited about all that they are learning.
• Spring has sprung! We are getting outside more and enjoying the fresh air.

Don’t forget sign-out!

IMPORTANT—please remember to sign your child out each day. Thank you!

Be sure to “follow” the new LEAP website

1. Go to LincolnLEAP.wordpress.com.
2. On the right-hand side under “Coming up at LEAP,” you’ll see a “Follow” area where you can enter your email address. (You can always “unfollow” later.)
3. Bookmark the new website and remove the bookmark for the old site if you have it.

Recently at LEAP

Weekly sessions with teachers from Einstein’s Workshop have started at LEAP and are going great. Kids are learning to program in Scratch, a free kids’ programming language developed at MIT that’s getting a lot of attention (see the Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2014).

Coming up

• March 19 — Field trip to the Kroc Center in Boston, where we’ll be swimming and playing games in their beautiful gymnasium. Please send your child with a swim suit and a towel.
• March 21 — LEAP Kids Fun Night

Notes

• Lunch this Wednesday is hot dogs.
• Don’t forget to “follow” this new website to get future updates, as the email newsletters will soon be phased out. Use the link in the right-hand column just above the photo gallery.
• Important—please remember to sign your children out each day!
• Invoices were sent out via email today. Please see Chris with any questions.

Today marks the debut of the brand-new LEAP website, which has everything you need to know about LEAP—events and updates, basic information, forms, and of course cool photos! The site is based on a WordPress blog, so you can visit any time to see the latest news, or click the “Follow” button on the right-hand side of the page.

Many thanks to LEAP Program Director Kathryn Hawkins, photographer extraordinaire John Buffington, and writer/developer Alice Waugh of Watusi Words and the Lincoln Squirrel.

Let us know what you think of the website and how we can make it even better. Just email leap0615@gmail.com or call us at 781-259-0615. Enjoy!

Mia Katz demonstrates a science concept to the LEAP kids.

On Feb. 7, Mia Katz donated an hour of her time to do some cool science experiments with all of LEAP. It was really awesome and all the kids were completely entertained.

Liz Wilkinson, one of our first-grade parents and a high school Spanish teacher, will also be volunteering some of her time to LEAP. She will be teaching basic everyday Spanish to the kindergarten and first grade groups on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons. We are so excited to have her!

We had a huge turnout Saturday at the Winter Carnival Magic Show. The fabulous magician Eddie Raymond put on a great show!

As mentioned and now confirmed, Einstein’s Workshop will be offering an initial class for 3rd, 4th,and 5th graders here at LEAP. Einstein’s Workshop offers a variety of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) programs which have been quite successful in nearby communities. We’re intending to offer a succession of programs and will start with  Scratch, a computer programming language specifically designed by the MIT Media Lab as a good first programming language. Students will use their skills to create their own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art by snapping software blocks together using Scratch, which teaches basic computer skills, mathematics and computation, creativity, systematic reasoning and team collaboration. Please let us know if you would like to sign your child up; spaces are limited.

Save the date

• February 18-21 — Vaca-Playdays! Join us for a week of health and fitness. We will be learning about keeping our bodies strong and healthy through cooking, activities, sports, and team-building activities.
• March 7 — Kids Fun Night
• March 19 — Kroc Recreation Center field trip with swimming and games.