Play, Learn, and Excel After the Bell!
Hopewell Valley YMCA is pleased to offer a selection of after-school enrichment programs right in your child’s elementary school. Kids can play, learn and excel after the bell without ever having to get in the car! At the dismissal of school, children registered in an afterschool enrichment program will be dismissed to a central location, and greeted by their instructor. Enrichment programs are geared to allow children to explore new activities, socialize with their peers, and have fun in a safe and nurturing environment.
Opportunities are available in Academic based activities and in the Tom Jackson Sports Enrichment Activities.
We are able to offer sports enrichment programs from donations through our Annual Tom Jackson Golf and Tennis Tournament and other community donations. We would love your continued support of our youth programming. Please consider donating to our efforts!
Any students registering for the afterschool enrichment program will be dismissed to a central location, once school is dismissed and greeted by a staff member. Once the program instructors arrive on site, the YMCA staff member will release the students to the appropriate program for the start of the program. At the conclusion of each program, parents will pick up students from the assigned pick up location.
Fall Session: October 13 – December 15
Registration: opens 9/18; closes 10/9
Winter Session: January 22 – March 15
Registration: opens 12/22; closes 1/15
Spring Session: April 15 – June 16
Registration: opens 3/15; closes 4/8
BASKETBALL BASICS (Grades K-2)
brings your child’s love of basketball to the afterschool setting. Students will advance the the Jr. NBA curriculum while strengthening their basketball skills, knowledge and game play. Basketball basics works to create a secure foundation for each player’s basketball growth for years to come. Program will operate in the gymnasium at each elementary school.
Dance your way into fun and a love of dance. Each week, students will learn the fine disciplines of dance, yoga, and some light tumbling. Dance fusion enriches our dancers through music and movement. Disciplines covered throughout the year will be Hip Hop, Ballet, Jazz and Rhythm. Program will operate in the gymnasium at each elementary school.
YOUTH LACROSSE (Grades 2-5)
Students will learn how to properly hold a stick, work on footwork, passing, shooting, and learn the discipline associated with the sport. Lacrosse is the oldest organized sport in North America and a great sport to learn and play from elementary, to college and more! Program will operate with a combination of utilizing the fields and gymnasium at each elementary school.
FIRST TEE (Grades 1-5)
Trained coaches not only provide an introduction to junior golf and an opportunity to enhance golf skills, but they also create a safe, supportive, and empowering environment to help your child prepare for life ahead, including friendships, school, college and even their careers.By seamlessly integrating the game of golf with character-building, we create learning experiences that help kids uncover their inner strength, self-confidence, and resilience that they can carry to everything they do. Program will operate with a combination of utilizing the fields and gymnasium at each elementary school.
focuses on individual skill, fitness and sportsmanship, providing an opportunity for children to be challenged through fun games and team interaction.Children will also be introduced to competition in a developmentally appropriate manner. Program will operate with a combination of utilizing the fields and gymnasium at each elementary school.
Young Rembrandts teaches children to draw. Our approach fosters a wealth of skills such as fine motor skills, handwriting readiness, and attention to detail. Children taught using our step-by-step method develop increased patience, discipline, and focus as well as a host of artistic skills and expanded creativity, imagination and confidence. This Fall our students will engage in a selection of drawings that introduces them to a fascinating world of color, pattern, and design. We say goodbye to our favorite summer memory in our detailed still life drawing of a beach. We explore color usage and composition in our silly monster and fire truck drawings. You will be MOOOOOved to amazement with our stylized patterned cow drawing, that not only challenges our technique, but also our color scheme. Our students will learn cultural themes as they draw and color Kawaii art. Hurry back in and register for these back-to-school favorites! Sign up today!
KID WIZARD CLUB (Grades 3 – 5)
This internationally renowned (and fantastically FUN!) program leverages every kid’s love of magic into a strong vehicle for social and emotional transformation, as it cultivates empathy, imagination and discipline in youngsters. Students will learn and perform magic, brainstorm new ideas, write creative scripts, and learn to bring joy to their friends, family, and…everyone they meet! Importantly, they learn to see things from OTHER people’s perspectives, anticipate and react to dynamic circumstances, and choose their words with intention. They’ll develop situational self-awareness, and demonstrate more courtesy. Not only that, they’ll make new friends, develop a sense of belonging and team spirit, and grow their self-esteem by spreading happiness…by making money appear, floating objects, reading people’s minds, and much, much more! PLUS…they’ll be a KID WIZARD!! What could be more fun (and empowering!) for a youngster?
STEM FUNdamentals with LEGO (Grades K-3)
Let your imagination run wild with tens of thousands of LEGO® parts! Build engineer-designed projects and use special pieces to create your own unique designs! Projects are rotated seasonally to ensure that both new and returning students can explore the endless creative possibilities of the LEGO® building system.
Our goal is to introduce the beautiful game of chess to all the young and nourishing minds in your school. We believe that learning chess is not just going to make them good chess players; it is also going to make them better thinkers! In our Academy, we train hundreds of students of varying playing strengths every week. New Jersey already has a very good community of active chess players and we believe that by introducing chess in after school programs we will be able to enrich many more kids with this strategic game, thereby building a great chess culture in our community.
MAGIC SCIENCE (Grades K-5)
Funky Forces
Eliminate the mystery in chemistry & the forces that make our world work! Learn the secrets behind famous magic tricks, experience awesome forces, build some cool devices & watch them work! Build loop-de-loop flying stunt planes, use a vortex generator to create air pockets with a punch, experiment with gravity & create your own crazy crystal gardens!
Biomedical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering (Grades K-4)
This Junior Engineering class introduces our youngest engineers to fundamental concepts of health care Instruments, energy, materials, and movement. During this program kids will experience an exciting combination of Medical science and Mechanical engineering and work towards finding innovative real life solutions. Through open and focused exploration, students explore and construct robotic arm, knee brace, roller coasters, catapults, cars, and more.
CODING (ONLINE)
Website Design(Gr 4-5)
Students use websites everyday. Whizara’s website design course unravels how websites are created using HTML/CSS. Students learn to format content and style the appearance of the content using HTML tags and CSS style elements as they create their own personalized websites. Students further appreciate the aesthetics associated with website design and learn the significance of responsive designs as they create well formatted websites with organized content offering a pleasant browsing experience. No prior coding experience is required to participate in this class. A Chromebook or any computer/PC with internet connectivity is required to join the course.
Scratch Junior (K-2):
Whizara’s Scratch Junior programming course offers a fun way for young students to learn programming fundamentals as they explore and develop imaginative stories, animations, and games using MIT’s Scratch Junior drag-and-drop visual programming interface. Students learn programming concepts and Scratch Junior-specific concepts including motion, looks, sound, loops, and events, and get creative with designing, drawing, recording, and storyboarding personalized projects. The course further reinforces computational concepts of sequencing, pattern recognition, parallelism, and algorithmic thinking. A Tablet or Chromebook with internet connectivity is required to join the course. More on supported devices can be found here: https://www.scratchjr.org/about/faq
Scratch Programming (Gr 2-5):
Whizara’s Scratch programming course offers a fun way for young students to start thinking like a programmer as they explore and develop imaginative stories, animations, and games using MIT’s Scratch programming interface. Students learn programming concepts and Scratch-specific concepts including motion, looks, sound, events, loops, conditionals, game mechanics, operators, and variables. The course further reinforces computational concepts of sequencing, pattern recognition, parallelism, and
algorithmic thinking. No prior coding experience is required to participate in this course. A Tablet, Chromebook, or any computer/PC with internet connectivity is required to join the course.
Introduction to Python Programming (Gr 4-5):
Whizara’s Introduction to Python Programming course introduces students to the fundamentals of syntax-based programming via its fun, graphics, animation, and game-based engaging curriculum. Students learn the fundamental programming concepts including variables, user inputs/output, random, conditionals, loops, functions, events, lists, and more. The course further reinforces computational concepts of sequencing, pattern recognition, and algorithmic thinking, and the software development process. No prior coding experience is required to participate in this course. A Chromebook or any computer/PC with internet connectivity is required to join the course.
2D Animation (Gr3-5)
Whizara’s Animation course is a creative and engaging project-based course designed to introduce young students to the exciting world of digital art and animation. The students will explore various functionalities of the 2D animation to convey stories using animation. Students learn to animate images, plan and storyboard characters, manage frame, timelines, layers and more while completing fun and imaginative
projects. The course aims to develop students’ creativity, problem-solving abilities, and storytelling skills, as they create their own artwork, animations, public service announcements and more. An iPad, Chromebook, PC or Mac is required to participate in the course.
Mobile App Development (Gr 4-5):
This course introduces students to MIT App Inventor. Students understand the purpose and the user interface of App Inventor and use it to build several applications/games. As students build these projects, they explore core programming concepts and the different aspects of App Inventor, including adding components and designing their layouts, the blocks editor, and writing scripts to add behavior to the components. No prior experience with coding is required to participate in this course. Device prerequisite:
(i) Laptop/Computer (Windows or Mac) and Phone/Tablet (Android/Apple) or emulator in case there’s no access to Phone/Tablet OR (ii) Android-capable Chromebook). More details on the supported devices can be found here: https://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/setup. Students are encouraged to follow the link
on this page and install the App Inventor Companion App on their device ahead of the first class.