Grand Openings
(Year 3 Week 21)
Passion Projects
The heroes started planning for exhibition. With two weeks left in the session, they started to feel the heat. During this session, many heroes decided to add onto their passion projects. This resulted in business popping up. Grand openings galore! The studio now hosted a new bakery, a trading store and a convenient store with ‘all your modern day conveniences!’
Every day during collaboration, the heroes open up their businesses and begin selling and trading their goods. Now that a few weeks have passed, they even started decorating and designing their store fronts.
At exhibition, the following products will be sold and served:
Baked Goods
Hair Scrunchies
Office Supplies
….. and more to be determined.
The heroes want to remind all visitors to bring their hard earned cash for exhibition!
Innovation
Heroes fully embraced their roles as entomologists this session. In true entomologist fashion, there were trials and tribulations. Heroes patiently waited on their second batch of ants due to the tragic demise of the first ants (due to shipping). They made the best of their circumstances and designed their own butterfly gardens and tracked the progress of their caterpillars. They didn’t want to just wait around for their new ants to arrive, so they devised a plan.
The heroes decided to spill over from their last quest into this one and spent an entire afternoon creating their own version of the caterpillar/butterfly metamorphosis! Some heroes chose to do stop-motion, others put on plays and some designed art videos to showcase at exhibition.
Design and directing filled the studio. There were butterfly wings and chrysalis made out of sheets and within one hour, five videos were created. The heroes were buzzing with excitement over their creations and chattered filled the studio with how excited they are to show their families.
If there was a quote the heroes lived by during the week it would be:
Additional Projects
For some heroes, the love of entomology spilled over into other areas. On Wednesday during free time, the guide noticed a few of the heroes circled around a dirt pile. She went over to ask what they were so focused on. The heroes were excited to show her their real-life ant farm!
They thought it would be an interesting experiment to create their own ant farm by designing a mound and putting small holes for the ants to travel through. Their hope was to,
“see if we can make a better ant home by designing it ourselves.”
They collected sticks, built small structures and were in the process of searching for ants to place in their farm. They asked later on,
“If we make the best ant farm, could we sell it to scientists?”
Love of Language
The studio has been inspired by the traveling stories presented to them by their fellow heroes. There have been many heroes that have been on trips abroad and have gotten to come in and share their stories of adventure. This boiled over into seven of the heroes wanting to learn a different language. So far, the languages being practiced are French and Spanish.
They have been using Duolingo and practicing their pronunciation with the guide. This week they realized they could even use their computers to help with their pronunciation of vowels, since different languages put different emphasis on words. So far, half of the heroes have already worked through basic phrases.
This week, they were curious if there were ways to get in touch with pen-pals their age so they could Skype and practice their language with someone who wants to learn English.
They also presented the guide with the following reasons they have a will to learn a second and third language:
“I want to be able to communicate with people from different countries.”
“I know someone my age who can speak four languages!”
“When I travel I want to be respectful.”
“I read that kids from other countries have to learn two languages.”
“When I order in a restaurant I want to be able to read a menu.”
“I want to have a friend who is from a different place.”
Short Stories
There was a lot of joy centered around writer’s workshop this week. Many heroes accomplished the hard task of finishing their stories. When it comes to short stories, there is an art to bringing in the reader and ending the story without it feeling too rushed. That is a big task for any writer at any level. As always, the heroes rose to the occasion.
The heroes were intentional about their time and reached out to each other for help. Questions like this were heard throughout the studio,
“How do you make a catchy beginning?”
“Can you have more than one rising action?”
“How do I end this without leaving my reader hanging?”
Earlier in the session the heroes were challenged to find at least ten facts about science and incorporate them into their story. For the heroes who have finished this challenge they were incredibly proud of how everything turned out. The heroes wrote stories about space adventures in the deep sea and there was even a story about a forbidden journey across Antarctica. By Friday, they were working on group feedback for one another and were brainstorming ways that they could improve their stories to reach, Harry Potter status.
Heroes Meet Robots
Last week at Town Hall, heroes pitched the idea to watch the FIRST Robotics Competition. The competition is where high school students from around the world get together and build game-playing robots.
The competition started at 9:30 on Friday morning and the heroes tuned in to watch. Throughout the day the heroes checked in with how their favorite group, Team Taters. One of our heroes had a sister on the team so she was very excited to be able to watch her live! The other heroes cheered and rooted for the taters throughout the day. The heroes concluded that they would like to also do some type of robotics challenge next session.
Two of the Soaring heroes got to work on planning a quest-like competition. They said that they,
“want to get a head-start, so when we’re old enough to compete we will be ready!”
The love of learning in the studio runs deep. Some of the heroes got to work on designing their robots and researching ways to make the fastest and strongest robot with the least amount of supplies. It’s really magical to be up close and personal to the excitement and passion that the heroes find in unfamiliar places.
Wrap-Up
The heroes grew in numbers and passion this session. This week alone four businesses were added and there were extra art projects being completed and exhibited. The heroes seemed to have Spring Fever in terms of learning and growing. Their hunger for wanting to know more and create their own projects with zero prompting was incredible. The heroes and guides are very excited to get to exhibition so they can finally showcase all of the work and passion that they have harnessed.
