By Jacob — The Spanish American Center in Leominster began its Verano Alegre summer program on Monday, July 1st. There are two programs, one for kids 5-7 and another for 8-13.
There are many fun activities you can participate in, like sports (soccer, basketball, biking), crafts (paper airplanes, birdhouses, bead animals), and science (extracting DNA from a strawberry, making ice cream, lava lamps, slime). Program Jr. staff showed us how to turn half cream and half milk into ice cream, and we added toppings chocolate syrup, sprinkles. The Jr. staff that helped were Alex, Aliah, Zahraa, and Yaya. We made the Ice cream under the tent in the parking lot St. Cecilia’s Parish. Jr. Staff Aliah states “making ice cream is useful because kids can make ice cream at home, don’t need to buy any, and also learn how to use measurements.”
Another activity you can participate in is Makey-Makey. Makey-Makey is an Invention kit that allows the person using it to turn random objects into a touch pad for a Gaming controller. It works by using materials that can conduct electricity to make a circuit. We did this activity with turkey sandwiches, pencils, fruit cocktail, orange juice, and applesauce. Some even drew pictures on our laptops, like piano keys, and played music by coding. We are going to make larger and more difficult projects like tapping out music, making a giant floor design with numbers that you step on and play music. Jr. Staff Ephraim says, “by sparking the creativity of the youth, we set the Foundation of the Future.”
Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. visited us to donate $5,000 to support the summer program. He said he did this because he thinks we are all together and need to help each other out. DA Early states “I believe in prevention over intervention. He would rather prevent a crime than solve one. He also believes in the Golden Rule. He told us, treat people how you would want to be treated.
The Girl Scouts provide fun activities on Mondays, STEM activities under the tent. Girl Scouts advisor Brandi teaching all the girls in the program. The girls are working on making binary code brackets today. It was an idea inspired by Gracie Ermi , a research software engineer. She uses binary code signals to protect endangered animals like elephants and whales. The activity works by using different colored beads to represent 1 and 0, (binary code) then they can write their names with beads making a beautiful colored bracelet design, with their name on it. 9-year-old Aria says, “I feel like it’s good and fun because you get to do fun activities with friends and you are outside.”
We made bird wreaths, it’s an arts and crafts activity we do to help birds by aiding it with food in harsh winter migrations. Jr. Staff Yaya, Katherine and Zahraa helped with this project. Katherine told me the bird wreath recipe is cornstarch, corn syrup, bird food, and fruit. Everyone chose cookie molds. There were the options of heart, star, triangle, circle and flower, and we filled them with the mix. Then, we put the molds in the fridge. After a day, we took them out, then put strings through the middle of them so they can hang off a tree. “I learned from scratch how to make a bird wreath and it was really fun.” says 9-year-old Max. This activity was very fun for the kids, and they learned how to help the environment at home in a fun artsy way. Jr. Staff Yaya said, “They liked doing the activity and learning about how you can feed animals in nature.”
Field trips are a favorite on Fridays with the Boy Scouts. We went to Purgatory Chasm. It is a hiking spot in Sutton, MA. “It is rocky, and my favorite part was when I saw the slit in the rock. It was fun climbing rocks.” Said 12-year-old Jalyah. Every Friday is a different field trip to a different place. “Instead of going to the same place and knowing what you’re going to be doing, with a different place you wouldn’t be getting bored as easily” Says 12-year-old Roy. The next field trip is to Andres Institute of Art, to hike and see sculptures all on the hiking trail. We can touch and climb on them. I can’t wait.
In the coming weeks, we will have activities with iRobot, Mass Audubon helping us with our butterfly project, a chemist who is going to do some cool stuff with us, 3D printing, Footsteps2Brilliance, carpentry, papermaking, aviation and kite making and rockets, and creative writing. I think comic booking writing. Oh, and one activity we did last summer, we will do again, solar ovens and making Smores.