Arlington Community Education

Use your hands and your mind to find solutions to real-world problems as you learn how engineers think and work. Construct bridges and boats using cardboard, wood, and string and then see how well they stand up to wind, weight, water, or other forces. Collaborate as a team to design and build a pool noodle marble run, test it, take it apart, and then redesign it to come up with a better solution. Build your own catapult, participate in an egg drop challenge, and more.

Put on your designer’s hat and create a board game. You’ll pick the look, the illustrations, and the highlights and pitfalls of the play. Design the movement, reward, and resource management systems and then combine them so that they work together. We’ll take breaks for group trivia, riddles, logic puzzles, and games.

Let’s get creative with electricity! Create your own electronics such as light-up greeting cards, electric games, mazes, and even musical instruments. Each class consists of a circuitry lesson and a hands-on electronics project using components like lights, buzzers, switches, motors, and sensors. Most class days will include a project you can take home.

Come create miniature figurines and sculptures using soft, easy to use air-dry clay. It is lightweight and colorful and dries to a hard finish within 24 hours. We will have a fun theme each day: animals, food, and more—the possibilities are endless for tiny creations.

Explore different ways to code on an iPad using apps and websites such as Scratch Jr., code.org, CodeSpark Academy, Osmo, Ozobots, and more. We’ll get to play coding-based board games and do other non-screen activities that complement our coding lessons.

The sky's the limit in Expert Architects! In this math, writing, and presentation class, serve as president of a new architectural firm tasked with designing and building the city’s next skyscraper. Study a kid-friendly history of skyscrapers and create a blueprint of your own stylized tall building. We will weigh other considerations including the environment, traffic, and surrounding buildings using Google Earth to find the perfect location for our project. As an expert architect, create a three-dimensional model of the structure to present to your classmates.

Investigate creative ways of solving real-world problems, like oil spill cleanup, by building innovative tools. Work on projects such as constructing a miniature shelter to protect a puppy from sun and rain or making a windmill to generate power, using everyday objects. Design, build, and launch a model rocket and test it against your classmates, then tweak your design to make it go even further. Make your own slime, try building a colorful kaleidoscope, and grow your innovative thinking skills.

Learn amazing tricks that will wow your friends and family. Real circus performers will teach you skills including hula hooping, spinning plates, balancing objects, twirling flags, and juggling. We will also make a circus backdrop, and end the week with a performance.

In a one-of-a-kind experience, explore community, art, and self-discovery by becoming your own personal hero in an interactive world of live-action roleplay (LARP). Through themed games, art projects, and interactive theater, we’ll create fantastic adventures.

Learn to draw animals, vehicles, plants, ocean creatures, and more, using a combination of basic shapes. Pick your favorites and combine them to make a scene that you will color with a variety of media. Each day we will focus on a different theme, and build on our drawing knowledge to make more elaborate pictures. There’s no right or wrong in this class—drawing is all about having fun!

Spend your vacation making a movie trailer or shooting a commercial. Working in small groups, you will script, storyboard, rehearse, and film while learning techniques like script writing, rule-of-thirds, and mise-en-scene. We'll import our footage into Final Cut Pro and learn to edit as you add titles, sound effects, and music. You'll fine tune your overall look and have a finished film by the end of the class.

Learn math, economics, civics, geometry, and how democracy works as we join together to create a city within a virtual Minecraft world. Through this engaging, problem-solving class, design your own house and business as we learn about budgeting, profit and loss, and supply and demand. As we serve on a city council, study how laws are made and work together to create and vote on a city constitution. Work in committees to make key decisions and design buildings for your city. We will use mathematics and geometry to construct a working urban environment.

Create your own three-dimensional world by combining oven-fired polymer clay with a variety of mixed media such as decorative papers, markers, paint, duct tape, and found objects. Stretch, pull, twist, mold and sculpt people, food, animals, and more to inhabit the scene you create.

Create paper crafting projects using paper of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. Question, explore, experiment, and solve problems as you turn everyday materials like maps, calendars, cereal boxes, and brown paper bags into classy personalized cards and framed works of art. Our projects may include pop-ups, colorful flowers, and paper toys.

Challenge yourself to get from point A to point B in the most creative, entertaining, fastest and most efficient way possible, without the help of equipment. Parkour is like urban gymnastics, and lets you turn the entire world into your personal playground. In a non-competitive atmosphere, you’ll conquer natural and man-made obstacles by running, vaulting, jumping, climbing and rolling. Improve balance, coordination, strength, spatial awareness, and flexibility through games, exercises, and drills.

Learn about what it means to write, debug, and execute computer programs that communicate with different robotic devices. Using the power of code we’ll turn Sphero SPRK+ robots into Magic 8 Balls, automated red light/green light games, and the arcade classic Pong. Unruly Splats will become voting machines, relay races, guessing games, or anything else you can think of.

Always a blast, Sports of All Sorts will get you playing many active and exciting gym games cooperatively as teams, and as individuals. Activities may include castle ball, messy backyard, capture the flag, tic-tac-toe relay, and monster ball. With unique and sometimes crazy spins on traditional sports and gym games, this class is guaranteed to get you moving, and having fun.

Experiment with improv, movement, scene study, and developing characters. Build your confidence with warm-up games—ranging from silly to serious. Then we’ll bring stories and scenes to life as we learn how to move, talk, and act like different characters. We’ll finish by putting on a show for our friends.

There are so many ways to use watercolor! We’ll explore the medium by learning how to make beautiful colors and patterns on paper. We’ll also make a sketchbook, a mixed media mask, and paint on plaster. Let’s stretch our artistic skills.