K-6 Morning

For each session, morning students attend three different classes for one hour each morning for two weeks. Thus, they have one class from 9 AM to 10 AM, another from 10 AM to 11 AM, and a third from 11 AM to 12 PM. Dismissal is at noon each day. There is no extended care available for morning only students.

Kids looking at laptop

Session Dates:

Session I: June 15th - June 26th
Session II: July 6th - July 17th

Class Size:

Limit to 15 students per class

What to bring:

A folder with pockets and pencils
A nut-free snack to eat mid-morning

Play With Your Food: Artistry in the Kitchen

Grades K-6th
Have you heard the expression, "eat with your eyes?" Beautiful to behold as well as tasty to the tongue, artistically prepared food can appeal to all the senses at once. Explore the amazing and creative possibilities of vegetables, fruits, bread dough, and even gummies as we create imaginative works of art, both edible and inedible. Get the giggles as you shape, create, carve, and decorate. Explore the symmetry of an apple, the humor of an eggplant. Food can be a delicious medium for creative expression, on the plate and off. No macaroni boxes here, but some imaginative, messy and occasionally edible fun. You may never see food the same way again!

National Parks

Grades K-6th
What do Earth’s biggest trees, tallest geyser, and longest canyon have in common? They can all be found in national parks in the U.S. Using Google Earth’s satellite imagery, we’ll explore some of the famous trails, topography, and animals located in the parks. Discover the history and geology behind Yellowstone supervolcano eruptions, the granite faces of Yosemite, and the many rock layers in the Grand Canyon. We’ll make our own trail-ready snack and explore wilderness first-aid techniques. Learn how naturalist, John Muir, photographer, Ansel Adams, and 10-year-old rock climber, Selah Schneiter have been driven to greatness by exploring the national parks, and how you can too. Find out how our national parks came to be and explore the flora, fauna, and geologic history they protect for us all.

Dream Time and Kiwis - Exploring the Lands Down Under

Grades K-6th
Learn about the land, people, animals, and plants of Australia and New Zealand. The areas once known as Gondwana are home to unique animals and plants found nowhere else in the world. In Australia, discover the culture, art, and "dream time" of the earliest Aboriginal people and make music on your own didgeridoo. Imagine life as an 18th century convict settler, exploring a new land that ranges from tropical coral reefs to massive outback deserts to icy waters that are home to Little Penguins. In New Zealand, recreate the narrow boats that brought the Polynesians to live on the green islands of volcanoes. Imagine a country with more sheep than people and flightless birds. Their language is the same as yours – or is it?

Animal Rescue

Grades K - 6th
Are you an animal lover? Would you like to find ways to help homeless animals? Come investigate the who, what, where, why, and how of animal rescue. Learn the difference between an animal shelter and a rescue. Find out what it takes to run such an operation and learn ways kids can be an ally to animals looking for forever homes. Choose what kind of animal you would like to assist? We’ll make several items to help pets at the Austin Animal Center - design adoption posters for senior pets, tie dye bandanas for long-stay dogs, make rice socks to keep puppies & kittens warm, and create cat toys for bored feline friends.

Around the World in 10 Days - An Exploration of Food and Culture

Grades K-6th
Explore the food, culture and history of countries around the world. Travel to Egypt and eat falafel and mahshi while visiting the capital city of Cairo. Discover Piccadilly Circus and Big Ben on a search for the best fish and chips in London. Wonder at the beauty of the Taj Mahal. Awaken your senses with the smells and tastes of jasmine and spices in India. A final stop to the island of Japan will bring you to the populous city of Tokyo. Here you’ll taste tempura and pickled vegetables while learning about the art of Manga. Learn history, customs, and traditional foods from countries around the world. You’ll make a passport and a journal to keep track of your travels. Get your passport stamped at each destination and use your journal to record facts and recipes from each country. Fill up your passport with stamps from around the world.

Vexillologist! Vexillographer! Vexillophile! Which One Are You?

Grades K-6th
Have you ever considered the designs on a flag? They are more than just interesting symbols. From battlefield identification to a countries’ specific symbols, flag colors and designs contain hidden meanings. We’ll delve into flags from around the world and learn their secrets. Are all flags created with the same materials? Let's find out why they are used. What purpose do flags have in our modern world? Let's share some ideas and come up with new reasons and traditions for flying a flag. Using your new knowledge of flags, you’ll plan one of your own. Channel your passions and feelings to design your own personal and unique vexillum.

Clay Techniques from Around the World

Grades K-6th
For over 25,000 years, humans across the globe have shaped, decorated, and fired clay. Despite great differences in location and time, universal themes appear in the world’s ceramic traditions, including religious influences, human, and animal representations. Join us on an adventure around the world as we learn about pottery from different time periods and places. We’ll become potters and sculptors and learn how to play with ideas such as scale, multiples, detailing, texture, and craftsmanship while learning the basics of hand-building techniques in clay. Did you know that pottery is one of the most useful finds in archeology? Together we’ll recreate an archeological site and gain an understanding of the vast amount of information a simple piece of pottery holds.

Rome-ing Through Italian History

Grades K-6th
Italy is world famous for its beautiful art, delicious cuisine, and magnificent architecture. Discover how Ancient Romans lived by traveling back in time. By teaming up to build our own aqueduct, learn how Romans got water from city to city. Through mythological stories, we’ll gain an understanding of how they explained the world around them. Learn about a few famous Italian artists and paint your own masterpiece. We’ll explore the cuisine of Italy by making our own pasta from scratch and going on a faux truffle hunt. Pick up a few Latin words and learn some ancient games.

Meet the Masters

Grades K-6th
Have you ever heard of Picasso, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci? What about Renoir and Caravaggio? Get a close look at some of the world’s most famous artists who have shaped the styles and techniques we enjoy today! Each day we’ll explore a new artist and create projects that are focused around the technique and styles from Wassily Kandinsky, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Henry Rousseau, Frida Khalo, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Edgar Degas and Gustav Klimt. We’ll draw, paint, and sculpt our way through time as we learn why mankind’s most enduring achievement is art!

Castles, Dragons, and Royalty

Grades K-6th
Hear ye, hear ye! I call upon all of you gentle persons locked away in your castles to come learn all about the Medieval Times! Castles are far more than drawbridges and stone walls! They were cities within cities. What kind of people lived in these castles and who lived outside the walls? Find out and build your very own example! Storm the castle as we explore and release catapults, trebuchets, and other siege engines. And yes, there were games and entertainment: juggling, music, jousting, and plays. Imagine creating a dance, learning how to juggle, and designing your own shield or princess attire. Can you spot a dragon or unicorn? Join us in a time both real and magical.

Art in Architecture

Grades K-6th
Self-express art through the many aspects of architecture! You’ll create your art using simple materials - shaping them into architectural wonders. Learn how parts of architectural fabric are carried over in many different forms of art. We’ll look at the use of space - color - design - sharp lines - soft lines - paintings - pottery - jewelry - sculpture - buildings - structures and light, light, light! Explore different architectural periods and discover your favorite, mimicking it in the form of art. Construct a real building from your imagination - design a skyscraper, home, school, monument, or pet home.

Far Away Fantasy Worlds

Grades 2nd-6th
Immerse yourself in the imaginary worlds from fiction, including Middle Earth, Camp Half-Blood, Narnia, Hogwarts, Weslandia and your favorite land beyond imagination. Then construct your own fantasy world. Design a map of your lands. Will it include a dense forest like in Narnia? Poppy fields? Caves? Castles? Using recycled materials, build structures for your setting. Develop characters with extraordinary powers and flora and fauna that inhabit the area. Document a history of your own world. With scraps of material create clothing. What kind of accessories and tools will your characters need? Is there a special language? While answering these questions, we’ll discuss the elements of a civilization. Adventure awaits as you travel out of this world and into your own.

Riddle Me This - Brain Teasers and Puzzles

Grades 2nd-6th
Add to your brain cells and multiply your fun with teasers, riddles and puzzles. The Cambridge Dictionary defines a brain teaser as “a problem for which it is hard to find the answer, especially one which people enjoy trying to solve as a game.” Teasers come in a variety of forms including language, math, and visual puzzles. Get your thinking cap ready to tackle logic problems and rebuses. We’ll discover Wuzzles, KenKen, and Cryptograms galore. Do you like optical illusions, spot-the-difference pictures, or number puzzles? Escape rooms combine riddles and solutions to guide you through situations. Using your newly acquired skills, you’ll design your own clues and puzzles to create an escape room adventure. Ready, set, solve!

Call to Action

Grades 2nd-6th
Do you have a cause you feel passionate about? Maybe you want to increase awareness of our environmental issues, promote animal welfare, or encourage racial/religious tolerance? We’re going to explore the intersection of democracy and art. We’ll examine how political art can be a platform to express, protest, and make fun of beliefs and issues, after learning about well-known artists who work in this genre, like Diego Rivera, Ai Weiwei and Keith Haring. Use paint and collage to create a poster promoting change. We’ll also investigate political cartoons and create a caricature of several modern political figures.

Technology Marvels that Changed our Lives

Grades 3rd-6th
Nothing has changed the world more than new technologies that become widely used. Fire, the horse collar, agriculture, the wheel, and plumbing were all once revolutionary new technologies that transformed the way people live. Look around you - every bridge, building, car, boat, aircraft, and spacecraft you see today was once just a dream in somebody’s head. What dreams are in your mind? Join us as you design your own future! Why do some ideas become reality while others do not? Try your hand at forecasting, planning your own city, or plotting a technology revolution. Discover some new technologies that didn’t work out as planned, and some that turned out better than expected. We’ll investigate the latest research and engineer an incredible new future.

Fantasy Island

Grade K-6th Come plan, develop and build your very own island! Whether it be based on real world or fantasy fiction - it will be yours to create. Where will it be located? What does it look like? What language do you speak? What kind of creatures inhabit your island? Is there anything magical about your island? Do you have money or even need it? Just imagine creating every aspect of your island - based on what you know and where you have been perhaps. You’ll learn about real islands, send a message in a bottle, and an SOS for help! Share your island with others by giving them a tour. There is so much planning to do….we must get going!

It’s A Jungle Out There!

Grade K-6th The Amazon Rainforest? Africa? You don’t have to travel any further than your own backyard to find an abundance of beautiful animals and insects. Did you know a barn owl can eat its entire body weight in mice each night? Identify the many birds of Central Texas and make a bird feeder. Discover why possums play dead. Find out how to attract colorful butterflies and hummingbirds to your own yard. We’ll examine pond water under a microscope to explore our tiniest creatures. Identify coyote tracks and create some of your own. Get to know lizards and rabbits and bees, oh my!

Backpack Across Europe

Grades K - 6th Bonjour! Ciao! Willkommen! Join us as we travel across Europe and explore what makes this continent so exciting. Create your own masterpiece while discovering treasures at the Louvre in Paris. Explore Germany as we make a gingerbread house worthy of Hansel and Gretel. Design your own family tartan in Scotland (Perhaps we’ll spot the Loch Ness Monster!) You’ll make pizza in Rome and then head over to Pisa to investigate just why that tower is leaning. Sing along with The Beatles while making your own Yellow Submarine. And while in England, prepare and enjoy a proper British teatime. Bon voyage!

Cool Constructions

Grades K-6th Are you curious about how things work? What's inside, what makes them go, why they fly, and how you could make them better? Join us as we explore patterns and powers, buoyancy and bridges, symmetry and silos. Learn how kangaroos hop! We’ll figure out how to support weight and how to let things fly. Use your imagination, ingenuity, and recyclable materials to design and build new creations that illustrate classical principles of construction. From origami and tangrams to submarines and pyramids, use your creative maker skills to learn and understand the way things work.

Vet School

Grades K-6th Do you dream of suturing fabricated wounds, reading x-rays, and dissecting an animal heart? If so, you’ll want to apply to the prestigious Inquiring Minds Veterinary Academy. We’ll plug in the microscope to get up close and personal with the notorious flea. Join us as we learn about parasites and ailments that affect the animals we love and how we can keep them safe. We’ll explore the dietary recommendations of veterinarians and use their findings to create healthy dog treats. Not only will we solve medical mysteries, but we’ll put on a stethoscope and examine some healthy feathered and furry patients.

Books - From Pages to Binding to Cover

Grades K-6th Books can be useful, full of information, and make believe. But, can they be art? Discover the art in every step of building a book. Explore the history of paper making, book binding, and lettering. Make your own paper and illuminated manuscripts. Discover various ways to bind your book, including sewing and gluing, as well as different materials and techniques for designing covers. Create a book for journaling, one for photos, or one with pop-ups just for fun. We’ll start by making paper and preparing it to turn into book pages. Then use your paper to create one or more books of your choice.

School Lunches from Around the World

Grades K-6th Calling all chefs who like a challenge! How does one feed hundreds of kids a nutritious and delicious meal every day of the school year? We'll journey around the world in search of answers. From France to Japan, we'll explore what kids eat during their school day by recreating a typical meal. Will you opt for rice and fish, or prefer a slice of baguette and cheese? Do different countries spend more or less per school meal than America? As culinary exchange students, we'll learn how others budget meals by comparing costs, and we’ll examine nutritional differences as we adhere to varying guidelines. Prepare your taste buds for a travel adventure!

Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!

Grades K-6th Oh, the power of advertising tag lines and jingles. They get us to buy more of what we love, and they entice us to buy stuff we will never use but just have to have! Come explore the world of advertising and the language and power of persuasion. We’ll dissect our favorite super bowl ads and the Saturday morning commercials we love so much. Create your own ads, commercials, and even write up a jingle or two! Can you motivate people and move your product?

Let’s Go to India

Grades K-6th India is tagged as the mother of many inventions like algebra, the number zero, shampoo, chess, value of pi, and diamond mining. This diverse country has nearly 90,000 types of animals including over 350 mammals, 1,200 bird species, and 50,000 types of plants. Did you know India is the only country with a bill of rights for cows? Culturally, geographically, and historically, India is a lively and fascinating country. We’ll explore some of the many wonders that make India’s culture one of the most unique in the world through hands-on activities such as the art of mehndi, ceramics, Indian cooking, dancing, meditation, and India’s most beloved pastime, cricket. Get your passport and let’s go!

The Search for Academics in Art

Grades K-6th Albert Einstein said, "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere." Journey into the connections art has with history, math, science, and writing. From ancient cave drawings to carefully drawn letters, with magical adornments telling a story, to symmetrical patterns in nature, this class will give you knowledge to inspire your creativity and imagination. Use math to plan your composition, science to make your own art materials, or tell a story in a painting or sculpture. Each day we’ll focus on an artist and an art technique or materials used. As facts are presented we’ll look for connections. Here is a hint: Every artist has a past. Every artist uses materials and themes from their own lifetime. Artists have been around since the time of cave people. There is always history to learn. Each day you’ll use the daily artist and techniques to create your own masterpiece. The possibilities are endless!

From Antarctica to Mars: Science on the Frontiers

Grades 2nd-6th What can the icy glaciers of Antarctica teach us about the fiery planet of Mars? The frontier days are still with us, as explorers navigate the bitter cold reaches of the seventh continent, Antarctica. Learn about the life forms that have adapted to this severe environment and discover how what we learn about Antarctica directly affects the exploration of planets in outer space. Astronauts and scientists live and train near the South Pole to prepare for what they might encounter millions of miles away on Mars. Learn about the explorers of our southernmost continent, the animals who live there, and how humans adapt to the harsh conditions there in order to pursue scientific studies, as well as how those conditions have been changing in recent years. Check out the generations of Mars Rovers to see what NASA has learned from them. Space food - we'll have to try some!

Be a Graphic Novelist

Grades 2nd-6th A graphic novel uses cartoon drawings to help tell a story. Like comic books, graphic novels weave entertaining drawings with a small quantity of words to tell a story. The stories could be about fantasy, science fiction, history, fairy tales and myths, or even true stories about science or biographies. Introduce yourself to character building, plot, and setting as you look at various graphic novels. Strengthen your vocabulary, build your reading confidence, and have fun drawing your action pictures. Increase your appreciation of storytelling as you create your own graphic novel!

Household Chemistry

Grade 2nd-6th Chemistry is the branch of science that studies matter and its properties, and how different elements interact, combine, and change to form new substances. Are you ready to study these properties and interactions? Starting with lab safety, we’ll learn best practices for conducting science demonstrations and investigations. As we conduct experiments with liquids, we’ll become familiar with terms such as cohesion, capillary action, and chromatography. Using ingredients found around the kitchen, we’ll create edible flubber. We’ll make a burning soda snake rise from the ground as we study chemical reactions. While testing solubility with common candy, we’ll discover floating m’s. We’ll use liquid layers as a colorful representation for different densities. Chemistry will help you better understand the world around you and how it works.

Math Maniacs

Grade 2nd-6th Do you like Numbers? Puzzles? Tricks? Games? Get ready to solve mind boggling problems using a variety of mathematical strategies. Play and create games involving geometry, number sense, and computation using boards, paper & pencil, and cards. Do you have triskaidekaphobia? Not after learning how to force your opponent to pick up the dreaded number 13 coin. We’ll also investigate famous mathematicians such as Descartes and Euclid, discovering their important contributions to math. Shortcuts such as decomposing and compensating strategies to quickly find the answer to tricky mental math problems will be sprinkled throughout. Power up your brain, bring on the numbers, and be ready to become a math maniac!

Micro Nano World

Grade 3rd-6th What really goes on in the world of things so small we can’t see them? What is the difference between macroscopic, microscopic and nano-scale? Why can a single ounce of gold be stretched into a thin wire more than 50 miles long? We’ll use video microscopy to look at ice crystals melting, what really goes on inside a plant, and how to understand what we see when we magnify things many times. What does it really mean when we say something is “dirty” or “clean?” Put on your high-tech detective’s cap and see how the smallest clues can solve the biggest crimes. How does an electron microscope work and what other kinds of microscopes are there? You’ll learn how to use the world of the small to do big things!

We hope that you’ll find our schedule full of so many interesting courses that it’s hard to choose!

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