Summer CUBS 2023

Summer CUBS this year was a hit with students and staff.  Opening on June 26th, it ran for four weeks until we sadly said, “See you next year” on July 20th.

Students took creative and fun classes in literacy, math, science, and art every morning.  Afternoons were spent in physical activity (various games of tag and hide and seek were especially popular), learning games, additional literacy activities, and, on two special occasions, visits by an educator from Animal Adventures, who brought a dinosaur and reptile program one week, and a lesson on wild mammals the next.  Not many Worcester kids have petted a screaming hairy armadillo, or seen a tiny primate called a “bush baby,” but our CUBS kids have.

A specially designed curriculum connected science and art. It was made possible by a grant from the Worcester Arts Council and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The curriculum had two units. The first focused on states of matter - gasses, liquids, and solids.  Students engaged in science experiments designed to help them understand how states of matter can change.  They observed freeze pops before and after they were frozen, made Jello and Oobleck, and watched water change to ice and steam.  In art, students connected their understandings about molecules to pointillism, creating beautiful "dot" pictures.  They also made paint by soaking "dead" markers in water.  Some of the liquid paint was then turned into sidewalk chalk by adding cornstarch, demonstrating another change in state of matter. The second unit was on landforms. The science lessons were reinforced in the students’ art classes, and they were proud of their creations, especially islands with a variety of mountains, volcanos, ponds, rivers, and beaches, many of which are displayed here.