The end of the school year has just flown by! Great job to all of our Squash on Track students for finishing out the year strong and congratulations to all of our 5th graders for graduating and moving up to middle school!
Weekend Events!
In May, we hosted the kids at Squash Zone for a day of squash and learning! Volunteers Patrick Van Kerkhove and Sam Griffin led a lesson on investing and played a game to teach the kids about investing in stocks. The students were very engaged and wanted to learn more, which inspired the two boys to lead a Financial Literacy series that will continue in the Fall. We also learned about the science behind making slime and what makes slime so viscous (a thick sticky consistency between solid and liquid). The kids of course loved making their slime and the volunteers almost seemed to enjoy it even more!
TRACK STAR Summer Scholars!
We also held a ceremony to present the TRACK Star Summer Scholar Award! Thanks to the generosity of the Bhagwati family, Giovanni and Angel will be attending special summer programs! These two were selected based on our TRACK Values (Teamwork, Respect, Appreciation, Communication, and Kindness) and we wanted to celebrate their commitment to using these values to support their academic, squash and life goals. Gio will be attending a hybrid chess and ping pong summer camp where he will hone his paddle skills and learn the strategies of the board, and Angel will be attending the Galileo Summer Camp where he’ll get to work on building a soccer-playing robot! Congratulations to Gio and Angel and a huge thank you to the Bhagwati Family!
Cleaning Day!
In June, we held our final Saturday of the school year to come together and clean out our Squash on Track van—after a long semester, it needed some TLC, so the kids worked together to clean the inside and outside. We also had Patrick and Sam continue their Financial Literacy series and did a lesson on cryptocurrency and NFTS.
Art with Cathy!
This month, the SOT students worked on loads of fun art projects too! Cathy helped lead projects where the students worked on making their own versions of trees showing the complex overground and underground. They also created their own spiderwebs with string and made model clay spiders! In their final lesson, the kids learned about the importance of bees and their role in our ecosystem—they focused on the components of a bee’s anatomy and drew an enlarged version on a large flower. The kids were curious to learn more about various insects and animals and we look forward to further developing the curriculum to connect art with life science. A huge thank you to Cathy Gregory for volunteering and leading art classes twice a month with our students!
Golf Day!
Thank you so much for coming out this week to our Golf Day at Emerald Hills! We were so happy to see so many new faces, and it was such a beautiful day for golf. Thanks to all of you, we raised over $3,500 for our program!! We are so touched by this turnout and are very grateful for you all.
Golf Day Fundraiser
Thank you so much for coming out this week to our Golf Day at Emerald Hills! We were so happy to see so many new faces, and it was such a beautiful day for golf. Thanks to all of you, we raised over $3,500 for our program!! We are so touched by this turnout and are very grateful for you all.
Garden!
The garden planted by SOT is growing every day! There are now jalapeños, arugula, cilantro, zinnias, and marigolds. Please check it out right outside of the entrance doors! We hope to plant many more species and take advantage of the lovely California summer weather.
Members, please let us know if you want to help partake in cultivating our garden by watering plants during the weekend as the heat rolls in, we could certainly use some help with the watering responsibilities on the weekends. Also, a thank you to Lyngso Garden Materials Inc. for making our Squash on Track community garden possible by donating all of our soil!
Family Potluck
Finally, we celebrated the end of our year with a family potluck! We spent the afternoon at Red Morton Park and the kids had a blast exploring the Magical Bridge Playground! It was wonderful to have all the families come together and celebrate our first year together as a cohort.
We have had a great year of full programs and we are so grateful for all of our students, volunteers, and supporters who were a part of our year. This has been a great period of learning for our staff, and we appreciate all of the support we have had from the community!
Looking Forward…
Summer Camp!
We are getting ready for our two-week summer camp in the middle of July and are very excited to be building the program with a great team! We have Noah Lee, our Program Coordinator Intern for the summer, who will be working with me to build out and run the overall program! Very excited to have him join up to put on this camp. We also have Nihal Verghese who will be leading our coding and robotics curriculum using WonderWorkshop’s Dash and Dot robots, thanks to Vikas Gupta who is kindly lending us equipment for the summer camp. Very excited to see what the kids do! Joining in as Program Leads, we have Rianne Lui, Doris Diaz and Aneel Bunchandani—all wonderful young leaders who will bring their passions to the program to lead some fun activities! We cannot wait to make a magical camp for the kids!
Cycling Fundraiser!
If you have not already seen, we will be hosting a bike ride on August 14th !! Come join us for a 15-mile or 30-mile bike ride to welcome the students back to school after a nice summer vacation. We hope that you’ll come out and bring a friend who also cycles! We are asking for a minimum entry donation of $75 or more and will be having a light breakfast and lunch service at the beginning and end of the event. We are welcoming Aadi Chandra as our Event Coordinator Intern, who will be running point on this event, so please sign up with him at aadi.chandra10@gmail.com! If you want to join in but need help finding a bike, please contact us and we will do our best to get you a loaner.
TRACK Stars of the Month!!
To end out the year, we had two TRACK Stars—Kelvin and Angel! Kelvin has shown incredible growth over this year, and he’s been more and more enthusiastic about squash and our program. He has taken on more responsibility this month and volunteered to be our first van monitor to set a good example for the group, great work Kelvin! Angel has been a consistent star in our program and has been a strong communicator when conflicts arise and when compromise needs to be made, he is flexible in finding a solution. He has been improving a lot on the squash court and demonstrates strong sportsmanship! Great work!