Session 3.23 Preview

Civilization & Culture Exploration

Traditionally Session 3 is a civilization based Quest. Last year, our learners explored US Citizenship and our Adventure Studio completed the King George Experiment as they explored revolutionary era America.

This year, our learners will explore everything from how cultures around the world celebrate the Holidays, to the rise and fall of Ancient Greece and their vibrant culture, to why people do what they do in social groups with the exploration of Social Psychology! 

Sparks | Holidays Around the World

This session, the Sparks will travel to several different countries to learn about a specific holiday they celebrate! Heroes will get a Passport to collect information and activities in as we learn about each holiday.

Hero of the Week: Belonging and Respect
Our focus on heroes this session is going to be about people who showed belonging and respect throughout their life. Each hero is a representation of our three updated Spark Guardrails:

• We make sure every living thing is safe.
• We respect our work and the work of others.
• We take care of what we use.

The heroes of the week will be: 

1. We belong: Martin Luther King Jr.
2. We make sure every living thing is safe: Mother Teresa
3. We respect our work and the work of others: Steve Jobs
4. We take care of what we use: Isatou Ceesay

Culture and Geography
Because we are traveling to several places for our Quest, this session we will be having a focus of Holidays in the United States for Culture and Geography. We will also be reading stories about “What is Culture?” and why it is important.
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Discovery | Acton Athens

The Discovery and Odyssey Studios will be traveling back to Athens for the Acton Athens Quest! Heroes will be learning about Ancient Greece through a series of challenges, some of which are making a wax tablet, building and using an abacus, and sculpting a Greek Hero! By completing these challenges, Heroes will earn coins to spend at the Agora marketplace where they can buy challenge supplies (and on some special days, Greek art, toys, and foods)!

Civilization: Ancient Greece
We will read about the history of Ancient Greece and talk about some ancient Heroes from that time. Hero’s will make four more passports for their Hero’s deck of cards and carve a Greek vase with a hero's journey on it.
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Communication: Hero’s will be guided through writing their own myth, reading or telling it aloud and making a Greek illustration that goes along with it.

Odyssey | Acton Athens

The Odyssey Studio will be traveling back to Athens for the Acton Athens Quest! Heroes will be learning about Ancient Greece through a series of challenges, some of which are making a wax tablet, building and using an abacus, and sculpting a Greek Hero! By completing these challenges, Heroes will earn coins to spend at the Agora marketplace where they can buy challenge supplies (and on some special days, Greek art, toys, and foods)!

For Communication this session, Heroes will get to create a blog or vlog about a topic that they are passionate about! Blogs are a great place to express who you are and write down your thoughts, experiences, and ideas.

As always, we’ll start by looking at world-class examples, and then move through the stages of writing to end the session with a published blog!

Civilization will run alongside Quest, and Heroes will be stepping into the shoes of Greek heroes from Mycenae, Crete, Sparta, and Athens and asked big questions like:

• As the leader of a new civilization, what would be most important to you? An alphabet for communication, inventions in agriculture (for food), or large villages and more citizens?
• Agree or disagree: Every problem a democratic government faces should be decided by a vote of the citizens. Why or why not?
• What about the Greek empire do you think led to so much fighting within it: greed over land or Athenian and Spartan hatred of one another?

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Launchpad | Social Psychology

Quest: Social Psychology
Humans have been awe-stricken and mystified by the power of the mind since the beginning, and yet the formal science dedicated to it has only been around some 150 years. But what an info-packed 150 years it has been! Over the next four weeks weeks, this quest will explore all things cognitive, meaning mental processing, especially those processes impacted by the people around us. We will explore behavior; what determines it, what changes it. We'll ask questions about how we define the self, how we think about the people around us, how we are influenced by (and might influence) those around us, and about the factors that influence helping, aggression, and even romance!

This Quest combines deep research into these kinds of important questions as well as hands on real world experiments and tests (parents and family members may even find themselves the unknowing subjects at times!) Heroes will enjoy this glimpse into the endless possibilities that come from studying the mind, and a foreshadowing of some brilliant heroes whose theories we will analyze.

Communication: Letters to Your Future Self
Inevitably, at some point in your life, you will lose your perspective – perhaps in a time when a terrible defeat seems unavoidable or after a great victory, when you’re swept away by love (or something like it) or pressured by peers to abandon your morals, or when you simply need to let go of another’s expectations.
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During these important moments, you’ll wish you had a trusted friend to offer solace and guidance. In this Communication Project, that trusted friend will be YOU. In other words, the current you will serve as a future friend by writing five letters to yourself – the future you – offering comfort, words of encouragement, and advice for when you need it most.