North Faring Exploration makes learning fun for kids

String Duets and Trios

By Lyla Kavanagh ’26 (HW)

String Duets and Trios is a North Faring Exploration program run by music teacher Emily Reola.
Reola has a rising tenth grader and rising junior also assisting in the program.
It was started by. Reola when the performing arts program first began on the lower campus.
“For some of them, it’s their first time playing chamber music or a part by themselves,” Reola said.… “I want them to gain confidence in their playing.”
She said she wants students of all ability levels to have a positive first experience playing chamber music.

Around the World in 13 Days

By Tali Gurule ’27 (HW)
Through cooking, languages, history, fashion and music, students spend three weeks learning about different cultures in Spanish teacher Aaron Bluestein’s “Around the World in 13 Days” class at the middle school.
“There’s such a diverse and amazing world out there and giving kids exposure to those other cultures and languages, hopefully, will help them develop skills of compassion and tolerance and an interest in difference and people with different mindsets,” said Bluestein.
Over six years ago, Bluestein used his love of languages to create a class focused on the various aspects of cultures around the world.

Boil Fizz Pop

By Mia Ushiba ’26 (HW)
The Boil Fizz Pop science class incorporates hands-on experiments and cooking to make a fun and engaging science program for students grads 5-7.
Here, young researchers discover and learn more about the changes food goes through in the kitchen. They participate in journal reflections, cooking and experimenting, and of course, trying the food afterward.
“They are so curious,” science teacher Jordan Bricker said. “They always want to know more. They always want to learn the reason behind it.”
Bricker has been a 6 and 7th-grade science teacher for about five years and believes that hands-on experiments are important for students’ learning experience.
She believes it is essential to keep asking questions in the lab and try it out for yourself, taking compelling risks for an exciting and interesting outcome and discovery.

Lemonade Stand

By William Tang ’26 (Science Academy STEM Magnet) & Angela Ren ’26 (HW)
Lemonade Stand is a three-week course taught by Communications Department Head Jen Bladen at North Faring Exploration, an enrichment program for students going into grades 5 through 7.
“My biggest hope for the students of Lemonade Stand is that they go out into the world and think as problem solvers, rather than just identifying a problem and not thinking there’s anything they can do about it,” Bladen said. “I want them to be empowered, to go out and solve what they see.”
The students of the class spend three-weeks developing their business ideas, watching different entrepreneurial videos and participating in upcycling. But some students arrive to class with goals, ideas and solutions ready to be implemented.
“My goal was to invent something and try to take away a lot of knowledge and I think I did take away a lot of knowledge and how to solve a problem and how to think of a problem,” Serena Hayoun ’29 (Emerson Middle School) said.

She is innovating a way to keep store-bought flowers alive for a time span of six months to a year.
“I’m using a glycerin to water ratio of 2 to 1 in a mixture to keep store-bought flowers alive for a longer time because for me personally, they die after about a week of purchase. And so this mixture, the flowers soak up the mixture and it replaces the moisture in the flowers,” Hayoun said.
Ari Jain ’30 and Hayden Milken ’30 really enjoy the Fridays because they get to  bring in trash which they then try to find a use for in their projects.
Every Friday, while they upcycle, the students of Lemonade Stand watch Shark Tank, an American business reality television series on ABC where entrepreneurs present their businesses to five millionaire investors to invest in.

In the summer of 2021, Bladen was invited to teach the class. She loved the idea of so much time for brainstorming and thinking outside the box and trying to solve a problem.
Each entrepreneur in training will come up with a problem that they want to solve, and then they’ll brainstorm solutions. The next step is to ideate prototypes. Each student sketches their ideas and decides how exactly they want their prototype to look. The challenge is that they have to actually create a tangible model with limited resources.
Bladen noticed that the things her students enjoyed the most were also the hardest. She said it is always so satisfying for the students to finally prototype something really difficult, such as a student who tried to create jewelry out of trash on the beach and when she finally did it, she was thrilled.
“I took this class because I thought it was actually about lemonade,” Zhang said.
“If the problem you want to solve is access to lemonade, we can solve that problem together,” Bladen said.

Music Theater Workshop

By Joanna Xia ’27 (HW)
Think about it, there has to be a time when you acted out something or watched something that dealt with dialogue, singing, and dancing. Well that folks, is a perfect example of the type of experience you will have if you join the Music Theater Workshop at North Faring Exploration. To train aspiring actresses and actors, students are able to do fun activities, training for both singing and dancing, and then performing the end result at the end of the program. The workshop shows that there is more to being an actor than just reading a script or memorizing lines for a dramatic scene or musical. Music Theater is a great way to take your passions and push yourself beyond limits that you would never think you could reach. In this class, students get to explore and find their creative side through the fun of interactive theater games, activities for voice training in groups, and shaking things up with dancing.