J-Term: Creating New Worlds & Baking Bread
J-Term offers a dynamic shift in learning while maintaining the regular school schedule. During this four-day program, students participate in hands-on, interdisciplinary, and student-centered projects that emphasize exploration, collaboration, and curiosity. This year’s program builds on what we learned from our first launch and offers more student choice across a wide range of experiences tailored to different interests and developmental levels. You will find a few of our fun J-Term activities below:
Kitchen Chemistry: Bread Wizards
In this hands-on experience, students are learning that bread isn’t just food… it’s actually science in action. As they knead dough, mix ingredients, and test recipes, they’re uncovering the chemistry that makes bread rise, bubble, stretch, and transform into something warm and amazing.
Mrs. McKenna has two big goals for this class. First, students explore the science behind fermentation and rising – a process humans have been using for thousands of years. Plus, the ingredients and measurements add a little math into the mix!
And second, they learn the cultural perspective of baking: understanding how much time, effort, and patience it used to take to make bread. In the 1700s, baking wasn’t a quick trip to the grocery store – it could take days from start to finish.
Each day, students created a different type of bread, including quick breads, yeast breads, and sourdough. It was messy, hands-on, and full of learning — and the best part is, you can taste the results!
Creating a World Beyond Our Own!
In this creative class, students became world builders, designing original worlds entirely from their imaginations. They created detailed maps, developed unique cultures, and wrote short histories—or “lore”—to bring their worlds to life. By the end of the week, each student had crafted a fully imagined setting complete with its own story and sense of place.
