American Girl & Boy History Club
The American Girl and Boy History Club will focus on one character per month and important events and eras in America’s
history while focusing on positive character traits of that character. Children are welcome to bring dolls or animals with
them.
Each month will focus on a new AG historical character; children will read book or series on their own, if they choose to.
The online project (in person if covid gets better) combines the children’s knowledge to get an idea of the event or era using
its American Girl Doll, and will include geography, culture, vocabulary, and important events for the given time period.
These areas will be explored and shared by photos, videos, maps, and a craft and/or baking assignment. Good character traits of each American
Girl character will be emphasized and why character matters.
The members will have the chance to discuss the character and time period we learned about, positive character traits, and what it would have
been like to be a boy or girl at that time in history. If regulations loosen up, I would like to go on one field trip to San Juan Bautista living history
site which resembles the Spanish ranchero that Josefina, 1864, came from.
Archery
This project focuses on archery as a shooting (targeting) sport. The first meeting will be virtual: the range location, rules,
nomenclature, and interests and objectives of the participants. Subsequent meetings will be at the Redwood Bowmen Practice
Field, and focus on stance, form, and execution. Rained-out meetings will be virtual again.
Art Project
Welcome to the Art Project! In this mixed media project we will be discussing techniques, art styles, and more in this interactive
project for everyone to learn about art. At each meeting there will be a different art tutorial and a different set of techniques to try.
Baking
Get your aprons and your spoons, it’s time to bake some treats. Each meeting we’ll try a new recipe. We will follow the recipe
together step by step, and while we wait for it to bake, we’ll learn a little about the techniques used and where the recipe came
from. At the end of the meeting we’ll taste all our hard work and compare notes—the cherry on top!
Bay Area Biking
We will meet with our bikes and helmets to ride various paths and trails in the East Bay. Our first meeting, we’ll meet on an easy
path. As a group, we can decide our average skill level and discuss what our future rides will be.
Birds
This project focuses on birds, their characteristics, songs, and field identification. No prior knowledge is required.
Conversational French
This project focuses on conversational French: words, phrases and conversations. The project will be virtual. No prior knowledge of French is required.
Cooking around the world
We will be making lunches together, while learning about culture, history, and nutrition. Each month we will make dishes from a different country. While we enjoy our lunch, we will tell stories about the cultures the food came from and learn nutrition information. The junior leaders did this project with their grandmother over the summer and found that cooking together over zoom is a lot of fun!
Cosplay/Costuming
In this project, we will be coming together to create a costume or cosplay of your choice. We will use our meeting time to discuss costume plans, craft together, exchange tips on how to execute our ideas, and just get a little time to chat and work on our projects. Sewing and crafting help is available for those who need it. Bring your ideas and let’s get to work!
Creative Math
This is the 4th year of the Creative Math project and while we have explored many topics in discrete and recreational mathematics, we aren’t finished yet! Until we can resume in-person meetings safely, we will be exploring fun math topics using Desmos, Geogebra, and Exploding Dots. Members will do guided activities on their own at home, and then we will have short Zoom meetings to discuss the math and answer any questions that might come up. Once we can meet in person again, we’ll resume having our awesome hands-on math explorations at the leader’s house in San Leandro, covering everything from probability, logic, geometry, and much more . We try to make our explorations hands-on, with lots of puzzling, drawing, figuring and manipulating, but for older kids, there can be some formulas and more formal math as appropriate. Math is not a competitive subject, and we approach our problems and puzzles with a spirit of cooperation and having fun, and fun is exactly what happens!
Digital Art
This will be the 6th year of this project, and it’s morphed into a teen workshop, where members work on their art together, talk, and offer some critiques in there. We usually start meetings with a short lesson on art, and we’ll continue last year’s focus of comic art with Gail Simone’s #ComicSchool (from Twitter). She is a writer of comic books (DC’s Birds of Prey is one, but she’s been involved with many, many comics) and created a popular class with her #ComicSchool, offering lessons, assignments, and feedback on her timeline. It’s all been archived, and we’ll work through her lessons – short and sweet – through the year. We’ll start the year with virtual meetings, moving to in-person as soon as we can (leader’s house in San Leandro).
Entomology
This primary project will be focusing on Bay Area Backyard Bugs, because we learn best when we connect our learning to real world phenomena in our backyard. We’ll start virtually, using videos (KQED, Nat Geo) and online interactives to learn about pill bugs, native bees, wasps, and ants with at-home activities that members can share during our virtual meetings as well as discussing what they’ve learned. Examples of at-home work include making drawings, photographing bugs in your backyard, or writing a story about an insect. We’ll resume in-person meetings as soon as possible and will meet in San Leandro (either at home of leader or park). We’ll make homes for native bees, set some traps for pill bugs and ants so we can observe them, and grow
plants to attract beneficial insects to our backyards.
Environmental Stewardship: Plastics Pollution
We skipped a year, but this is our 13th year of the Plastics project in East Hills, and we are still focused on the problem of marine plastic pollution. What is plastic pollution, and what can we do about it? We’ll learn about that as well as trying to educate others about the problem and possible solutions which includes plastic reduction, reuse, re-purposing and recycling efforts.
Our focus this year will be:
Cleanups and Microplastic study: we’ll do individual coastal cleanups (cleaning up plastic debris at local shores in Oakland and San Leandro),
and our own analysis on the soil on the beach/estuary with soil augers and sieves to see how much microplastic has infiltrated the soil.
Beach cleanups will start at the end of September for a total of 3-4 sessions. Members can either do their own sessions, documenting their work,
or meet together with distancing and masks to clean. When it is safe to meet inside again, we’ll meet at leader’s house in San Leandro to analyze
the plastic and samples with sieves and a microscope and we’ll work on an educational display. There will also be virtual learning lessons to be
done at home at members’ convenience (videos and reading) until we can meet in person.
Citizen Science: we’ll send data on our collected plastic debris to science groups (Clean Swell), pellets for pollutant analysis, and more.
Evolution and Genetics
This will be a 100% virtual project, using a real-world based learning simulation from Concord called Connected Biology: https://learn.concord.org/connectedbio Using real data on deer mice (collected in the field), members will learn about deer mice and their life cycle, and what drives their adaptation of fur color to their habitat (fields to beach to rocky mountains). Members will learn to analyze data, modeling, how evolution drives all of biology, and much more. If there’s time, we will also have fun with Geniverse (also Concord Consortium), a super fun introduction to
genetics with a dragon based game. Monthly meetings will be for members to ask questions and discuss what they’ve learned, most work will be done at home at their convenience. The project leader has a biology background and will help members through the concepts and topics
Gilltract Farms
Gill Tract is volunteer-run farm (massive garden) on property belonging to UC Berkeley at the Berkeley/Albany border. We will
meet monthly to tend to farm jobs such as weeding, broad-forking, and planting.
Jane Austen Book Club
This is a book club project where we will be reading the novels written by Jane Austen. Members will read one book a month, on their own, and then we will meet online to watch the corresponding movie together. After the movie is over, we’ll have a bit of discussion about the book, the movie, Jane Austen, and Regency era England.
Magical Creature Safari
Unicorns, dragons, faeries, elves–where do they come from? Join us as we explore the world of magical creatures, learn about the myths where they first appeared, and the cultures who imagined them. This will be a multimedia project including images, videos, books, crafts, and more!
Digital Makerspace
Curious about what developing software is like in the real world? The tools they use? Join the Digital Makerspace to experience a realistic, real world software development experience. We’ll be developing an adventure game, starting as a text-adventure and extending the scope of the game as the members get more experienced during the project. You’ll be learning and using Python and any accompanying tools needed to make the game. Members will collaborate with Github (an industry standard), supplementing with Zoom meetings and project management tools
as needed.
The leader of the project is a CS student at UC Berkeley, with several years of experience in software development through internships. This
project is for someone who is already familiar with Python and will be “get out what you put in” style; we plan on doing very few Zoom meetings
and mostly work through GitHub. We will still have monthly meeting times, but they will be for the members to work on the project.
Members can do as much work outside of normal project times as they like. If you don’t know much Python but are highly motivated to learn as
we go, you are welcome to join.
Primary Makerspace
A makerspace project designed especially for our younger members! (Older members are welcome if space permits.) From low tech to high tech, we’ll have fun making things. Each meeting is typically dedicated to exploring a specific topic. Topics from previous years include paper airplanes, electricity, LEGO chain reactions, stop-motion animation, musical instruments, and even 3-D printing
Mini Micro Greens
Mystery Project
Over the course of five meetings use your powers of logic and discernment to unravel a deadly mystery. Each meeting we’ll learn
how to investigate real-life mysteries and solve some fun puzzles along the way.
NaNoWriMo
World History Research Seminar
This project is designed to cover a year’s worth of history curriculum. In addition to reviewing major events in modern world history, participants will complete 4 research projects throughout the course of the school year. They will learn how to evaluate sources, write annotated bibliographies, and create a properly cited research paper. Papers will be presented to the group for peer evaluation. Participants will also respond to discussion questions as they explore topics in world history and help each other to flesh out ideas for research.
This project will involve a significant amount of homework and is designed for middle school to high school students. The purpose is to develop
solid research skills in preparation for college level history courses. Final research papers can be submitted to the World History Association’s
annual high school essay contest, which offers a $500 cash prize to the winner.