Welcome to a new year of our Enrichment program. It’s going to be an exciting year for us. Students will experience local DeLand history, Florida’s natural environment, explore play writing, hone their dramatic/speaking/presentation skills, and develop goal-setting techniques. Enrichment students are offered advanced classes in Mathematics and Creative Art. Our program gives them many opportunities for challenging and diverse learning.

For our first month of classes, we  focused on self-awareness and team building. Each week held many challenges and activities centered around getting to know our team members as well as learning about ourselves and what we have to contribute to the group. We  began our “bucket list” of concepts that make us wonder and that we would like to learn more about. Many science experiments are at the top of the list so it looks as if we will be spending a few classes in our school science lab. Building something is also high on the list. Your students are full of great ideas and curiosity which makes for great learners. I look forward to our year together.

Currently, we are doing an indepth study of the Apollo Space program. To begin our unit, we first explored Science Fiction, read and performed a skit about it,  and wrote short stories using this genre. You can imagine the amount of aliens involved in our stories! From there Mrs. Dahlheimer gave us instruction on simple cartooning and we converted our stories into small graphic story books.  

This month we have been designing what each of us thinks the next Apollo rocket would have looked like. From a drawn design, students are creating a rocket model using recycled materials. Painting is a messy part of this and I hope your children haven’t come home with more paint on them than their rockets! When these are completed, we will be building a display stand for them and we’re planning on including them in the upcoming Science Expo. Who knows what will be next? Perhaps an outside lab with rockets that really launch? We’ll see. I am currently working on an Field Trip with the Kennedy Space Center education department. More details will follow.

We enjoyed a trip to the Gillespie Museum at Stetson this past December and may be returning to take one of the new classes they offer in Florida Environmental Science. If we can’t fit it in this year, it will be a must for next year’s class.

Here is a sampling of where we are in our Enrichment day. We use the entire campus as our classroom!

Media Center ~ Music room ~ Stage ~ Middle School Math room ~ Art room

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me through my school e-mail. I’ll be sending home a blanket Field Trip permission trip for the year. This will cover the many small walking trips that we make locally as well as those that will require your assistance for transportation