Sunday, March 30, 2014

Creativity in Motion - building a Rube Goldberg Machine

For the past month students have been working collaboratively on creating their own version of a Rube Goldberg Machine. They've been working on understanding physics, expanding their problem solving skills, working with each other in communicating their opinions and ideas, and experimenting with different ways to make their project go. Since we have students of different ages ranging from 6-12 each child brings their own experience and knowledge with building things to create the project.

We've been viewing some videos of various Rube Goldberg projects from puppy dogs to giant ones, to ones that included women as creators. The video below shows Parkour Athlete Jason Paul - and his giant contraption.


  


We'll be adding a few photos and video from our project as well as some other wonderful examples of this mixture of art and science. So check back.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

An Interview with Kate LaClair - How Do We Help Part III

In part three of the interview done by Camille Henley - Kate addresses the important issue of how do we help deal with some of the issues in our community - in our city. 




Sunday, March 9, 2014

An Interview with Kate LaClair Part II - What About Syria?

We recently posted part one of this three part interview by Camille Henry on the VLog Page of this blog. In this second interview - Kate discusses her feelings on political unrest and humanitarian crisis in Syria.  


Saturday, February 8, 2014

What's This Sunday School About?


Curriculum for the Baltimore Ethical Society Sunday School program, has been developed with consideration to teaching to multiple learning styles and intelligences. The focus of the interaction with students is to engage in dialogue about topics which affect values, and embody understanding ethical culture, and philosophy.

 
Ethical Sunday School Lessons Align with the Core Values for Humanistic Living

Ethics is my religion
Every person is important and unique
Every person deserves to be treated fairly and kindly
I can learn from everyone
I am part of the earth: I cherish it and all life upon it
I learn from the world around me by using senses, mind and feelings
I am a member of the world community which depends on the cooperation of all people for peace and justice
I can learn from the past to build for the future
I am free to question
I am free to choose what I believe
I accept responsibility for my choices and actions
I strive to live My values.

Each session will include: interactive sounding or music making using percussion, voice, found sound. As each person enters, we go back to the beginning-asking what makes them unique. Some kids don't know at first, however if you keep asking them, they'll figure it out.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

The Problem with Keeping Orcas in Capitivity.


Recently two of our students had a bit of a disagreement on Sea World. One thought it was a wonderful place, and the other, a life long animal advocate shared what she had been studying elsewhere about the truth of how Sea World's captive animals were treated. Both students continued the discussion which included  more research about the life of whales at Sea World. The ethical treatment of all beings - including animals is very important to our students.

 Several petitions have been launched on the social activism platform www.Change.org to request that   prominent musicians including Willie Nelsen, and Heart, cancel their upcoming shows at Sea World, which they did after seeing the Sundance Film Black Fish. Another Change.org petition is hoping to gain enough momentum  to free the beautiful Tilikum.  National Geographic reports that children are also boycotting Sea World. 

Here's the YouTube preview for the film Blackfish - it is rated PG 13.




Saturday, December 7, 2013

On Gratitude - the Word of the Day for December 1st



  Gratitude  

Thanksgiving
Flowers 
heat
 food 
animals

Lego's 
sunlight
darkness
toys
fingers
peace
nerds
candy
books
cats

love
life
clothes 
school
sister

little sister
BES
Physics
TV
Hedgehogs

Hats
Homes
Element S2
iron
transistors

shopping
money
earth
cheese
Kerri-gold Dubliner

Tomorrow
Swiss Cheese
Kids section of Forever 21
blood
oxygen
air

sight 
photons
planets
heart
buddies

head
running
other body parts
and senses
friction
kinetic energy.

fun
energy
people making web comics
fiction
enjoyment
existence

the coast of Africa
calm
great food
death deities (Japanese)
scythe
Video Games.

All Rights Reserved
BES Sunday School Class December 2013









Saturday, November 16, 2013

On Growing a Green Wall, Having Enough, and Learning about Creativity and Cooperation

This month is the first official month where we've started to gather content for our blog. I will be acting as advisor for this Awesome Blog, and will contribute a monthly posts about what we've been doing and what we have planned.

We talk about a lot of things during Sunday School - and the topics this year have ranged from, bullying and how rules get broken, to when enough is enough, to and how young people contribute to making change in the world.

We've adopted as a group the program Free Rice as our community project this year, with an invitation to all of the BES members to participate in this great educational and humanitarian effort.

We started out the fall with the younger students planting lettuce terrariums, and the older students learning about growing green walls in Brooklyn, thanks to Ted Talks for Kids. Embedded next to this post is the Ted Talk on the student powered movement to bring city grown food to the local table in neighborhoods where food deserts had been the norm. The teacher is very energetic, and inspires the kind of passion neccessary to propel a movement. The older students also learned about the good, the bad, and the ugly of Sea World. They hope to continue a conversation/debate on varying view of how PETA handles mistreatment of animals.

In two weeks we will be presenting an original interpretation of the fairy tail Stone Soup during the annual Baltimore Ethical Society Harvest Festival. Learning the story and practicing for the play has been a great way for each of the students to individually and as a group to contribute to creatively building the story. We're looking forward to seeing how the play turns our next Sunday.

In future posts, we will be featuring segments from an interview with a young adult member Kate - and our VLOG editor Camille, along with more artwork, and contributions from all of the students.  

Here's a portrait of the gang - brought to you by one of our Awesome Kids, Brianna.