Education

Len Cabral is a nationally acclaimed award winning storyteller and author who has been enchanting audiences with his unique, personable style at schools, libraries, museums and festivals throughout the United States and Canada since 1976. In addition to his performance art, Len provides keynote addresses and creates workshops for educators and students. Using mime, poetry, song, humor and vivid characterizations, Len is a popular storyteller at festivals and theaters around the country.

Jackie Davies is a successful local author who has received recent acclaim for her book The Lemonade War.  

Jackie Davies returns for a poetry residency that links students' roles as scientists, artists, and poets.  Jackie leads the students in the creation of a nature poem.  She takes advantage of our beautiful bird garden and asks the students to carefully observe nature and to draw detailed sketches in their nature journals.  In addition to the drawings, students jot down words to describe what they observe.  Students then use the words and drawings from their journals as the inspiration for their poems.  At the end of the residency, students revise and edit their poems, and they recopy them and glue them onto construction paper with their drawings. Each class celebrates the poets students have become by sharing their poems with one another.

As an introduction to our study of insects, the Bugworks exhibition brings live insects and other arthropods into the Kindergarten classroom. The instruction is interactive and the program emphasizes respect for the insects that are being presented. Topics discussed by the visiting scientist include life cycles and metamorphosis, anatomy, feeding strategies, locomotion, habitats and anti-predator defenses. The Bugworks scientist visits each Kindergarten classroom individually, providing the students with an up-close view of the insects and their different behaviors. The children are encouraged to ask and answer questions, make connections to prior knowledge they have about insects, and are encouraged to have safe, gentle interaction with fascinating six-legged creatures.

Do you know the difference between a metaphor and a simile? Better yet, do you know how to make learning language arts fun? Poet Jeff Nathan does.  Jeff Nathan, award-winning children’s author will visit Pine Hill 2^nd grade on May 27^th Focusing on education through humor, Jeff has developed some very unique programs that get the right-brain to help the left-brain to open up and learn. Children, while learning poetry and language arts lessons from a different angle, see these new educational adventures as hilarious and fun while teachers and administrators are just as ecstatic.  Jeff's programs also help show that it's okay to like sports AND like writing and poetry, especially as kids laugh at some of his sports poems.