Connecticut Experiential Learning Center (CELC) is host for the National Geography Bee for all Connecticut homeschoolers.

On Monday, 23 January 2012 nine students took their places on the stage of the auditorium of the James Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford, Connecticut.  These students have all been working to prepare for the day’s event – The National Geographic Geography Bee!

After the preliminary round containing seven questions to determine which four would be moving on, there was a tie for the third finalist and third-place winner.  The tie-breaking round commenced, followed by a final championship round, which ultimately determined our 2012 Bee champion!  

Willow Coleman of Guilford is this year’s winner.  Willow will now take a written exam that could qualify her for the state competition, which will be held at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain 30 March 2012. The National competition follows thereafter in May in Washington, D.C.

Students were all very pleased and proud to have been a part of this Geography Bee, now a CELC tradition, and are already preparing for the 2013 Bee!

CT Experiential Learning Center 

Hosts 2012 National Geography Bee

for all CT Homeschoolers

CELC 3^rd Annual Geography Bee

James Blackstone Memorial Library

 Branford, CT

23 January 2012 at 1 p.m. 

Free and Open to the Public

For more information or to participate contact us:

 mandm@ctexperiential.org

or call 203-433-4658 / 203-215-2317

CELC is a rewarding choice for students in grades 5 – 8 in the shoreline area. It could be the right fit for you and your family.

Registering now for 2012-13 academic year.

Call 203-215-2317 / 203-433-4658 to schedule a Monday visit.

A variety of workshops and classes are available throughout the year  including: Outdoor Education at Meigs Point, drama classes at Long Wharf Theater, and water science with the Whitney Water Center.  Read on for more information, class descriptions and pricing, or call 203-215-2317.

Introduction to Japanese for ages 10-14

Location: CT Experiential Learning Center (CELC) at 28 School Street, 2^nd floor – Suite G, Branford

 Date/Time: Thursdays: Oct. 20, 27, Nov. 3, 10, 17, and Dec. 1, 8, 15 from 3:30 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Price:  Rate of $65.00 per class to be divided among participants   (minimum of 6 students to run the program)

This 8-week introduction to Japanese language and culture taught by an experienced instructor will include some or all of the following:

Writing systems (Kanji, hiragana, katakana) & basic usage

Pronunciation & simple vocabulary

Conversations – Self-introduction skits/Basic Survival Phrases

Writing: Kanji/Kana Calligraphy & Names

Culture explorations (cuisine, film, etc.)

Outdoor Education with CT Experiential Learning Center (CELC)

and Common Ground High School

This seasonal outdoor education program allows students a break to be out of doors, to bond with their peers and with nature in the quiet setting of Common Ground and West Rock Park.

Students will participate in monthly sessions in the forest that will allow them to fully experience the change of seasons. We will explore the trails of West Rock Park and observe trees and woodland habitats, streams and water flow, and signs of local wildlife. We will hike to the summit of West Rock and to Judge’s Cave and discuss the natural and cultural history of the landforms.

Overall, the students will have fun, get outside, and enjoy activities that build community and leadership.

Dates/Times: Tuesdays 12:30 – 2:30 p.m. 18 OCT, 15 NOV, 13 DEC 2011, 17 JAN, 14 FEB, 20 MAR, 24 APR, 15 MAY 2012

Cost: $12.00 per session or $80.00 per 8-week series

Contact us at mandm@CTExperiential.org or call 203-433-4658 or 203-215-2317 to register and for more information.  All participants must dress to be outdoors (raingear, protective layers and comfortable shoes to hike in, etc.) and bring a filled water bottle. Snacks are optional.

Water Science to Benefit LifeStraw®

Special Event for Homeschoolers and Families

CT Experiential Learning Center (CELC) will launch our Water Science Series in conjunction with the Whitney Water Center on Monday, 28 November.  Peter Cleary, Communications Director with Vestergaard Frandsen, Incorporated – the company that created LifeStraw® – will visit CELC in Branford to speak with students and families about its work to save lives.  Brett Leckey, a 10-year old who initiated his own project devoted to LifeStraw®, will also speak about his fundraising efforts to better peoples’ lives throughout the world.

All participants of the Water Science Classes please join us for this exciting presentation/lunch gathering that will begin our series. Bring a lunch and arrive for 11:30 a.m. to be followed by the presentations at noon.  The first Water Science Class will then commence from 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.  See you all on Monday, 28 November starting at 11:30 a.m. at 28 School Street, Branford, CT.  This special event is open to the public with a donation to LifeStraw®.

Please contact us at mandm@ctexperiential.org or call 203-433-4658 with any questions and see below for a list of all classes:

Water Science with the CT Experiential Learning Center and the Whitney Water Center to benefit Ucan2’s LifeStraw Project

Water is one of our most precious — and endangered — natural resources. The Regional Water Authority’s Whitney Water Center offers environmental education programs to show people, especially kids, how their actions can affect the quality of the region’s water resources.  Using engaging hands-on activities and experiments, students learn how human actions on land affect the quality of the region’s water resources.

All workshops are free with a donation toward Ucan2’s Life Straw Project. Contact us at mandm@CTExperiential.org or call 203-215-2317 to register and for more information.

Monday, 28 November 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. at 28 School Street in Branford:

WISE WATER WAYS – Students will learn how much water a dripping faucet can waste every day and easy ways to conserve water at home and beyond.

**Special presentation and lunch gathering begins at 11:30 a.m.**

Monday, 12 December 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. at 945 Whitney Avenue in Hamden: RETURNING RAINDROP – Students will explore the water cycle by building their own terrariums in clear two-liter soda bottles. You provide the bottles; we’ll provide everything else.  Students need prior knowledge of the water cycle.

Monday, 9 January 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. at 945 Whitney Avenue in Hamden: MAGIC OF MICROSCOPY – What are some of the smallest things that live in the Mill River? Students will learn the basic parts of a microscope and look at and identify some of the smallest plants and animals in the food chain.  Based on their findings, they will try to determine if the water is healthy.

Monday, 6 February 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. at 28 School Street in Branford: INVASION OF THE ALIENS - What are invasive alien species, and why should we care about them? Using zebra mussels and purple loosestrife as examples, students will learn about the problems that invasive, non-native species can cause.

Monday, 12 March 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. at 28 School Street in Branford: MACROINVERTEBRATE MESSAGES - Benthic macroinvertebrates are small critters that live on the bottom of a stream. Students will find out how scientists use macroinvertebrates to assess the health and water quality of a stream.

Exciting Drama Classes with CT Experiential Learning Center (CELC) at Long Wharf Theater

for homeschoolers ages 10 and up:

9 – week session on Fridays (7, 14, 21, 28 OCT; 4, 18 NOV; 2, 9, 16 DEC) from 12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m.

Join our Acting and Improvisation classes at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, beginning October 2011.  Activities will include acting games, improvisation, dramatic study of scenes and more, culminating with a “share/performance” for family and friends. This is a fun class where students can build new skills and utilize their imaginations and playfulness.

Cost is $150.00 per student.  Contact us at mandm@CTExperiential.org or call 203-2317 for registration and more information.

We began on Monday preparing thank you notes and gifts for the many people who have graced our lives to share with us.  Visiting the Abbey of Regina Laudis, having Carlos Eire meet with students, and working with native Spanish speakers from Mexico were just a few.

Tuesday was our final outdoor education day for the year.  Working with Lucy from Everyone Outside, we hiked the Timberland Trails in Guilford, re-visiting the same caves that we’d discovered in the fall.  Full circle, new seasons.

Wednesday morning we worked on our writing and then moved on to Casa Otoñal in New Haven for a community service project, creating gardens at this senior housing residence.  After planting flowers and sowing vegetable seeds, we were able to listen to and play traditional Latin music with elders on guitar and drums.  What a fabulous experience.  Students presented their gift of a paper quilt collage, which illustrated in words and images, the information students had gathered about the elders from their oral history interviews done a month prior.  Multi-generational people-to-people connections!

Placing our orders and speaking in Spanish, we enjoyed quesadillas and tacos at Mezcal restaurant in New Haven.  Following this fine meal, we set up camp for the night. CELC camped out, yes amidst some thunderstorms, at Trap Rock Ridge Camp, where we’ve spent much time throughout the year tending gardens and working the land. The next day’s heat did not stop the CELCers from hilling potatoes, stacking wood, having a grammar class, or cooking clam chowder and corn fritters on the camp stove.  And then came Friday, our final day to finish any loose ends, such as our final spelling test, preparing our writing pieces for the honoring ceremony, and of course, a bit of ice cream.

With an incredibly full year of learning to celebrate and honor, we gathered at Parker Memorial Park at Branford Point with families and friends while students recognized their accomplishments of the year.   Symbolizing their journey along this continuum of growth and study, students walked a path, reading words they’d written to describe their experience. From looking forward to seeing friends, to feeling tired yet happy to be pushed to work hard, students were proud, confident, and ready.  Parents were proud and tearful and filled with joy.   The path began and ended at the same point, yet, by making their way back to the beginning, anew, they faced in a different direction on the bench, symbolic of the new perspective that is now incorporated into our next moments and days. We acknowledged all we’ve done and allowed for new beginnings.

We ask for students to bring their best selves forward each day, and we ask that of ourselves too.  Learning that takes place at CELC may be quantified, yet there is also much that involves real inner growth – not as concrete, just as essential and long lasting, nonetheless.

The mighty circle continues.  Rock right on!

En route to Fredericksburg, Virginia students had a math class in the café car of the Amtrak train. CELCers are quite adept at making a classroom happen, whether it is on the deck of Boundless for Literature Circle or on the train platform for writing workshop.  Going with the flow – not often considered a developed trait for this aged student – happens as a matter of course at CELC.  We move around a lot, to interesting places that capture our curiosity and attention; the process of learning is natural, not forced, and is real and exciting.

CELC at Tsongas Industrial History Center in Lowell, Massachusetts

Learning opportunities come in a variety of ways.  Tuesday, 19 April CELC students interviewed residents at La Casa Otoñal in New Haven, a senior housing community serving mostly the Latino population. Students wanted to learn about the immigrant experience first-hand from these elders. Each student had a set of questions to use as a guide, and in addition to speaking English, prepared to use Spanish language skills to communicate as needed.

The students will now work to translate their interview notes into written memoirs and plan to compile them into a book to be donated to La Casa Otoñal, which will eventually become part of the first-ever Latino Historical Museum in New Haven.

For the week of 25 April, CELC continues on with all its regular academic subjects, with students immersing themselves as they go!  Even with a group of six, we have four different levels of math classes that take place.  Students explore topics such as the use of variables in algebraic equations, prime factorization, and how to solve systems of equations.  Grammar class is a bit of a rarity in many schools these days.  Yet, at CELC this week, students will certainly continue on their grammatical quest, including matters such as identifying direct and indirect objects, whether to use singular or plural verbs with indefinite pronouns, and how to avoid ending sentences with prepositions!  CT History has students learning about the Puritan lifestyle during the late 1800s and continuing to read A Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.  The U.S. History class is involved in a comparative study of war, having recently completed an analysis of both the American Revolution and World War I.  I could go on and on, as we offer instruction in 15 different subject areas!

For our field experiences for the week of 25 April, we have a yoga class on Tuesday with Dorothy at the Watering Pond Studio in Guilford. On Wednesday, we have a guest speaker from Columbia who will visit and share with students his immigrant experience. Thursday it’s birding with Celia to continue our point-count study of birds in the Jared Elliott Preserve in Guilford. We will soon post our data on our website.

On Friday, CELC heads to New York City to continue our study of immigration.  We will visit and tour the Tenement Museum, participate in a workshop entitled “Getting By”, where students will visit the apartments of a German-Jewish family who survived the Panic of 1873 and a Sicilian-Catholic family who lived during the Great Depression.  We will take a Multi-Ethnic Nosh Tour with Big Onion Tours – a culinary jaunt through the Lower East Side neighborhoods.  To top off the day, we will visit and experience the Sony Wonder Technology Lab in midtown Manhattan.

Thanks for reading.  Stay tuned for student blogs, highlighting their impressions of CELC’s learning adventures!

Theme combines subject areas, including social studies, science, language arts, math and field experiences.  As Americans, we can only understand our country through a study of how we all came to be here.

A variety of opportunities are provided to allow students to gain an understanding of the immigrant experience.  In addition to creating artistically done scrapbooks that document their own family histories, writing a comprehensive research paper focusing on a particular country from where waves of immigration came to the U.S.A, and becoming an immigrant during our year-end theme extravaganza event, students travel to a variety of places and host visitors to the classroom who share their own life stories.

Recently, Miriam Swidel came to CELC and told of how she and her family were able to survive the Holocaust and how she eventually was offered the opportunity to come to this country when she was about 18 years old.  We also visited Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, and next week we will take a tour of New York’sTenement Museum, to be followed by a “multi-ethnic nosh tour” with Big Onion Tours, where we will explore, see, hear, and even taste our way through the variety of neighborhoods of New York’s Lower East Side.

CELCers will look forward to spending time with our friends at La Casa Otoñal on Tuesday, 19 April.  As part of our study of immigration, students will conduct oral history interviews with the elders.  The group will then celebrate Earth Day by cleaning the grounds and preparing the gardens for planting.

Wednesday, 20 April we will travel to the Tsongas Industrial History Center in Lowell, Massachusetts. In addition to touring the factory, mills, and boardinghouses where immigrant girls – mostly from Ireland and England – came to work during the Industrial Revolution, students will take part in a workshop entitled Yankees to Immigrants.  They will become immigrants, unpack luggage & tell their stories, investigate daily life, and resolve an issue dividing Lowell’s citizens.

Check back again soon for photos and updates about all of these exciting activities.

Real learning, real experiences, CELC.

The study will now expand into learning about the waves of immigration to the United States spanning the past four hundred years.  We also will take special note to investigate current immigration policy and conditions.  A visit to New Haven’s Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services (IRIS) to learn about refugee resettlement, community service work with Casa Otonal, and visits to New York’s Tenement Museum and Ellis Island are some of the field experiences incorporated into our study.

Likewise, this study is enhanced by a variety of guest speakers who share their stories with students.  One such speaker who visited today was Angeli, a recent emigrant from Mexico City. After completing a four-year residency in psychiatry in her native country, and because of her outstanding academic accomplishments, she was eventually invited to the U.S. by a local university to study. Our students had an opportunity to listen to some of what was expected of her by way of social service to her country of Mexico before her diploma was conferred.

Students have chosen countries to study for the research projects.  They will each research a country from where there was/is a large number of people who emigrated to the U.S., focusing primarily on the “push/pull” factors involved.  Students will ultimately write a full research paper, and along the way will be taught the skills of outlining, note taking, compiling their notes into a rough draft, all with the intent for a final published piece.

Students will then bring their research to a new level as they work toward our “theme day” event to take place in June.  Students will create a persona from the country they have studied.  They will design and build a “living museum” display, dress in authentic costume, and become this person.  Visitors are welcome to attend and meet our “immigrants” from China, Korea, Mexico, Cuba, Poland, and Italy on Friday, 3 June from 12:30 – 2:30 p.m. at the Blackstone Memorial Library in Branford.

Combining their factual knowledge with their creative writing, students will design a Google Lit Trip online utilizing Google Earth to “show” the journey of the persona they create in an historical fiction piece.

Keep in touch for more information about our theme day.  We hope you will join us!

Bluebirds, once prolific in this area, have had trouble in recent years as they nest in cavities – found in dead trees or wooden fences – which have been removed often due to land use and development.  Also playing a role in their decline are competing species of birds that are not native to this area. Building bluebird houses topped off a fine workshop and gave students a better understanding of the history and important role that wildlife refuges play in our natural environment.

From building bluebird houses at the Stewart B. McKinney Wildlife Refuge to meeting Dr. Bernard Lafayette, these middle school students lead a full life at CELC as we work, learn, and grow.  We will keep you updated as we move about the world. Keep in touch with our blog, entitled “Journey with CELC” to find out about all we do!

Journey with CELC and find out what’s on the horizon for the week of 14 February …

We have much going on during our regular classes. Math allows for students to stretch their thinking.  From lining up the decimal points and studying number systems and place value to dimensional analysis and linear functions, we do a lot of math each day.  Comparing and contrasting our lives with the ways of the Puritans during the mid to late 1800s adds another element to Connecticut history class, as we continue with our reading of the novel The Witch of Blackbird Pond. This is the story of a girl who moves from Barbados to Wethersfield to live with her aunt and family and how she finds a way to make a life for herself when she doesn’t easily “fit in”.

Science class will begin a study of atoms and learn through lots of experiments and explorations about the matter that makes up everything.

And some other highlights:

Tuesday, 15 February – For outdoor education we go indoors for a yoga class with Dorothy.

Thursday, 17 February – Skiing at Mt. Southington.  Students will take to the slopes, some who have never skied before and others who will build upon their skills. A lesson followed by some time trying their technique, this is an adventure that ensures confidence building and teamwork as we encourage and support each other and all of our efforts.

Friday, 18 February – Spelling test and sharing of the new words we gathered this week, then onto the James Blackstone Memorial Library to begin our theme research study, to be followed by a fine pizza lunch, all culminating with a 2-hour drama class at the Long Wharf Theater.

Next week we continue on with more!  Highlights include:

Wednesday, 23 February – Students will attend a performance of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra in collaboration with the CT Center for Nonviolence, presenting a Lincoln Foundation Discovery Concert entitled : A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.