Hooray for Enrichments

Our school is unique in many ways. One thing that makes our school stand out from the rest is our enrichment program. Whenever we have a full week of school, one of the days (usually Wednesday or Friday) is earmarked as an enrichment day. Enrichments vary greatly depending on the age group. As the oldest kids in the school, our students have the freedom to choose which enrichment they would like to participate in. We (7th and 8th grade) have 4 sets of enrichments. Students are required to do at least one humanity and one PE enrichment each year. There are many exciting enrichment opportunities for the students to participate in during this first round. Each teacher designs their own enrichment and we basically have the freedom to do anything (within reason). One teacher is leading a kayaking enrichment. During this 5 week enrichment students will learn the basics of kayaking and maybe even a few tricks! Another teacher is leading a cooking class. The students will have the opportunity to work with a college cooking professor as well as a few local chefs in their own restaurants. A third option is the "hiking with a visual reference". For this enrichment the students will take a variety of hikes with sketch pad in hand. At the end of the enrichment they will gather their sketches and create a mural masterpiece. Along a similar line, the fourth person on our team is also leading an art class of sorts. Their focus will be portraits. This past week the group had the pleasure of visiting the art museum in Denver for a couple of hours. Finally, last but not least, my enrichment brings together my past and present surroundings if you will. The Rock 'n the Waves enrichment splits time between the pool and the rock wall. On Wednesday we began the day at the Avon Rec Center. After a few minutes of free time in the lazy river, we made our way over to the main pool for a swimming lesson. We practiced floating then moved onto freestyle and back stroke. By the end of the 40 minute lesson nearly everyone was swimming the strokes confidently. After our swimming lesson we hoped into inner tubes, broke up into two teams, and played a very exciting game of inner tube water polo. I love water polo! This game was unlike any I have ever played. We still had goals and wore the traditional blue and white caps but the rest of the rules were completely different. First of all, we had to remain seated in our tubes at all times. Also you were allowed to catch the ball with both hands but it could only remain in our possession for 5 seconds. What a crazy game! I laughed so hard! After a few exciting hours in the pool we made our way over to the Vail Athletic Club (aka home for me!!). The VAC has the largest indoor rock climbing wall in the valley. The kids had so much fun climbing and learning how to belay for their friends. Some of those kids must have a little bit of monkey in them or something. They flew up that wall and had fun hanging upside down. Craziness! In the future weeks we will visit other pools and rock walls. During the last week we will have an opportunity to climb outside on real rocks. We are so excited!!