Youth Classes

APRIL BREAK: April 18-22

Ages 6-8
Magic Tree House Adventure Club
W11-Y3
ALL DAY: April 18-22, 9 a.m.-3p.m.
$165 W&B members/$178 general public
limit: 12 students
Instructor: Marna Rossi

Take part in wonderful magical adventures from the Magic Tree House Series. Join Annie and Jack as they solve problems, help people, and travel around the world and through time. Visit New Orleans and swing with the music of Louis Armstrong in A Good Night for Ghosts. Find out about the newest story, A Crazy Day with Cobras, which will be launched on 1-11-11. Like Annie and Jack, we will learn about the animals and people in each environment we visit. We will read some of the stories and act out some of the scenes. You will illustrate stories through art activities and with a team, create your scenes and act them out for your friends and family on the last day. Pack a lunch each day.

Ages: 9-12
Writing Fiction: Let’s Get Started
W11-Y4
ALL DAY: April 18-22, 9 a.m.-3p.m.
$165 W&B members/$178 general public
limit: 12 students
Instructor: Debra Lewis

You have tons of story ideas swimming around in your head just waiting to be brought to the page. Well, it’s time to get started! In this class we will explore the basics of writing fiction and begin the process of bringing those ideas to life. Through character development, sensory descriptions, and an awareness of the basics of plot, any simple idea can be turned into a full-fledged story! It’s part magic, but it still takes work. Let’s do it together. Pack a lunch each day.

Journaling Series

With the growing popularity of memoir, it’s never too young to start journaling. These four workshops are designed to help young people get started and dig deeper. Students who participate in any one of these workshops will receive a journal. “The Writer’s Amazing Journal” is designed as an introduction to the series, but is not a prerequisite. Students may select to attend any one of the sessions, a few, or all four!

Ages: 8-11
Artists’ Journals
W11-Y9
One Saturday, 10 a.m.-noon
April 2
$27 W&B members/$30 general public
Instructor: Karen Lee Lewis

Would you like to become more creative? Are you looking for some inspiration?
Many famous artists have kept journals that explore their creative process. How can these journals help us become better writers? This workshop will explore the exciting world of artist journals, and we will discover how to use them to build a more inspired writing practice.

Ages: 8-11
Nature Journaling
W11-Y10
One Saturday, 10 a.m.-noon
May 7
$27 W&B members/$30 general public
Instructor: Angie Cannon

Discover the natural world around you through sketching and observation and create your own keepsake journal for months or years to come. Journals can be used in the city or country, on hikes, or while on vacations to help record your experiences, thoughts, and inspirations. Students will create their own journals, review some journaling basics, and get outside to practice observation skills through journaling. If you aren’t an artist - don’t worry - journals can be enhanced with photos, scrapbooking, or pressed flowers, feathers, and leaves creating an authentic book of your own design!

Spring Classes

Ages 10-13
Young Writers’ Circle
8 Wednesdays, 3:45- 5:00 p.m.
W11-Y6
March 23-May 18 (no class April 20)
$99 W&B members/$110 general public
Instructor: Wendy Low

You enjoy creative writing. Join a group of young writers who are eager to develop new skills. This course will allow you to dig in, explore new approaches to craft, share your work with others, and learn to give effective feedback under the guidance of an encouraging teacher. Inspiring writing prompts will help generate new work, and revision sessions will help turn a good piece of work into a great one. We will look at how to begin and finish works of fiction that will draw in and delight readers, sharpen our skill with words through learning new poetic techniques and forms, and try our hands at dramatic writing. Optional “fieldwork” assignments will allow you to further practice your writing skills. Students are always welcome to repeat this workshop, as new material is presented each time. Great for homeschoolers too!

Ages: 12-14 (or by permission of the instructor)
Comedy Improvisation
S11-Y1
One Saturday, 10 a.m.-noon
April 30
$27 W&B members/$30 general public
Instructor: Carol Roberts

Have you ever seen the television show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” and thought, “I’d like to do that”? Here’s your chance! Comedy improvisation is the art of plugging audience suggestions into specific theater-game formats with the result being at best hilarious and at the least entertaining. In this experiential workshop students will learn the craft of comedy improvisation through playing warm-up and group-building games, skill-building theater games and finally the improv sketches themselves. Students will learn in a supportive atmosphere designed for experienced and inexperienced improvisers trusting
and supporting their fellow players and learning to ask the audience for suggestions of how to create scenes, along with brief characterization, projection, and timing.

Ages: 12-14 (or by permission of the instructor)
Accidental Social Skills
S11-Y2
One Saturday, 10 a.m.-noon
May 7
$27 W&B members/$30 general public
Instructor: Carol Roberts

We welcome: Asperger’s, ADD/ADHD, Anxiety, High Functioning Autism, Neurotypicals (including siblings and friends) , and more! Have fun, make friends and learn social skills while playing easy and humorous theater and comedy improv games like those seen on the TV show “Whose Line is it Anyway?” Participants will enhance focus, impulse control, flexibility, creativity, emotional expression and interpretation and other social thinking skills without even realizing it. This is a supportive and nurturing workshop. Participation is always encouraged, never forced. I am hoping this will be a blended class comprised of “neurotypical” young people and those young people described above.
Curriculum is adapted from The Spotlight Program, backed by a Harvard University research study on the successful effects of comedy improv games in fostering social skills development for this population.

Ages: 8-11
Flower Fairies and Other Magic
S11-Y3
One Saturday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
June 4th at GELL
$40 W&B members/$45 general public
Instructor: Angela Cannon-Crothers

Bring your own set of wings and prepare to be inspired with author and naturalist, Angela Cannon-Crothers! We’ll explore the magic of the natural world surrounding the Gell Center, visit a real tree house to hear readings from Newberry Award Winner, Laura Amy Schlitz’s The Night Fairy, peruse Tracy Kane’s Fairy Houses books and build our own fairy houses on the grounds. Kids will have the opportunity to create their own flower fairy from natural materials and learn to write a poem about their fairy. Pack your fairy wings, a bag lunch, a camera if you have one (although fairies do not like their pictures taken, we can take pictures of the houses we make and of each other), and be prepared for whatever Mother Nature brings in the ways of weather, blessings, and enchantment!

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