You will learn a variety of techniques including Pointillism Painting in February, how to make a collage in March, Printmaking in April, and Native American Horse Masks in May.

To register or for more information, please call Gina at (530) 318-3639.

One on Gina’s specialties is Face Painting where you learn about blending and line work to create different cat faces, princess, monster masks and gruesome wounds. Face Painting for Kids is a hands-on class that comes with your own pallet of professional water soluble theatrical paints.  Face painting is uniquely fascinating in that the design transforms the wearer. Gina’s designs will lift and transport you to new and wild places. From a feline to a beast to a sad or happy clown; face painting will make you laugh, make you jump, make you growl.

About Gina Stowell, Art Teacher:

Gina has been teaching art to children in the Lake Tahoe area for over a dozen years. In 2004, she incorporated a nonprofit arts organization and implemented the fine arts program in all five elementary schools in our community with the help of 130 parent volunteers.

She has organized and taught fine arts classes for the Valhalla Arts, Music and Theater Festival at the Tallac Historic Site, Lake Tahoe Community College “Kids College”, L.T. Middle School After School Enrichment, and Visions in Education Charter School.

Whether in a Kids College Workshop or in her own back yard, Gina recognizes her young pupils as artists, teaching the basics of fine art while giving them the tools to make their own creative decisions. She works hard to encourage the child’s creative impulses, and to promote free expression.

Poetry Out Loud builds on the recent resurgence of poetry as an oral art form, as demonstrated by the slam poetry movement and the immense popularity of rap music among the nation’s youth. The program encourages students, though the study of poetry, to master public speaking skills, build self-confidence, and internalize our rich literary heritage. The response to California Poetry Out Loud has been so overwhelmingly positive that it is now being extended further throughout California. In 2011 thirty-four counties from San Diego to Siskiyou participated. California Poetry Out Loud is open to students in all kinds of high schools— public, private, parochial, independent, charter and home-schooled students.

“This year, because of a generous grant from the Women’s Fund El Dorado, El Dorado Arts Council has been able to recruit four new high school programs into the county’s Poetry Out Loud competition—Union Mine, Independence, El Dorado, and El Dorado Adventist,” says Emogene Marbut, program administrator for the El Dorado Arts Council. “Our rough estimate is that we have over 800 students participating county-wide!”

Area high schools that are recommitting to the program are Ponderosa, Golden Sierra, County Programs, Oak Ridge and Charter Community School’s Home Study Academies I and II. Last March, Rebecca Shields, a senior at Oak Ridge High School, won first place at the county competition and went on to compete against other county winners at the state finals held in Sacramento, advancing into the semi-finals.

A perk of the Poetry Out Loud program is its partnership with California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) which sponsors California poets in the classroom where they offer performance tips on student recitations.

“This year we’re lucky to have award winning poet Shawn Pittard return as a coach at each of our school sites,” says Moira Magneson, Poetry Out Loud coordinator for El Dorado County. “In fact, Shawn just published a beautiful essay in the literary magazine Spillway chronicling his experience with our county’s  Poetry Out Loud program.” In the essay, Pittard speaks to the program’s transformative qualities, saying, “I’ve seen poetry matter in the lives of the many high school students I’ve had the privilege to coach. I’ve been a witness to the intimate relationship that develops between between a person and poem.” According to Magneson, one of the fruits of the program is that it “gives students, teachers, and judges the tools to enter a poem, so that now, when they encounter a poem, their response is to jump into it rather than flee.”

Experts see significant benefits from Poetry Out Loud.  “The process of memorizing and sounding a poem is identical to learning to play a piece of music by heart,” said Al Young, a former California State Poet Laureate.  “A student or anyone else who takes the time to commit a particular poem to memory learns much about that particular voice and the nuances of poetry in general.”

The El Dorado County Poetry Out Loud finals will be held on Tuesday, February 7th, 7:00 p.m. at the Imagination Theater on the county fairgrounds. This event is free and open to the public, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. Members of the press are invited; please contact Emogene Marbut to RSVP.

For more information on Poetry Out Loud and the El Dorado County competition on February 7th, contact Emogene Marbut. General information can be found at www.cac.ca.gov and www.poetryoutloud.org. Reporters interested in more information about the statewide program may contact California Arts Council staff member Patricia Milch at pmilich@cac.ca.gov or 916-322-6385.

The theme of this year’s event is Life Science featuring interactive science experiments and demonstrations for kids ages 8 to 12 and their families with a special focus on DNA testing and plant dissections.

The Science Expo is open to the general public on from 4pm – 6 pm.. Admission is free.

High school students participating in the Youth Science Institute have an opportunity to develop experiments to share with the younger students in the community. Other partners such as Great Basin Outdoor School, IVGID Waste Not, Tahoe Rim Trail, Red Cross, Natural Resource Conservation Service, and Sierra Watershed Education Partnerships offer up activities, experiments, or demonstrations. UC Davis Americorps volunteers and docents can also be found staffing some of the stations.

“The Science Expo is truly a collaborative community effort,” said Heather Segale, education and outreach coordinator for the UC Davis TERC. “We have a three-year cycle of life science (2012), physical science (2013), and Earth science (2014) activities planned for the Science Expo.”

The Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences is located at 291 Country Club Drive in Incline Village (between Tahoe Boulevard/SR 28 and Lakeshore).

For more information please contact Heather Segale, education and outreach coordinator at (775) 881-7562.

Check out the free family science activity day from 2 to 5 p.m. on January 5, 2012 at the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences on the Sierra Nevada College campus in Incline Village.

Visitors and locals are encouraged to bring their families to explore hands-on winter-themed science activities for kids ages 8 years and older such as the mysteries of snow and ice.  You’ll conduct scientific experiments to discover what snowflakes look like under microscopes, what wind chill actually is, and why some animals hibernate, among many other activities.  All children must be accompanied by an adult.

Bring your curiosity and explore Lake Tahoe like you never have before.

For more information call (775) 881-7560, ext 7474. For more activities and programs TERC has to offer, visit http://www.terc.ucdavis.edu

Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences
291 Country Club Drive
Incline Village, NV

It’s easy to see why.  Marcia Sarosik has been teaching dance in South Lake Tahoe for over two decades.

Miss Marcia, as she is adoringly known by her students (and parents), let’s everyone shine at her dance studio in South Lake Tahoe.

A dancer her entire life, while growing up she performed throughout the Midwest, at USO shows and toured Poland as a folk dancer. She performed as a professional tap dancer in Northern Nevada. A highly sought out choreographer, Miss Marcia has choreographed for pageants and dance galas in Reno, and for the South Lake Tahoe high school’s musicals and children’s theatre. Miss Marcia recently received the “Champions For Children” award from The El Dorado Child Abuse Prevention Council.

Miss Marcia and her talented staff, many who are past students, teach a wide variety of dance classes to pre-schoolers through high school kids. And, since the kids were having so much fun, she added  Zumba, Heart Rhythms, and Hula and Hawaiian dance classes for adults so they could get into the act.

Classes:

• Ballet & Tap Combo (Pre-School thru 2nd grade)
• Jazz and Tap Combo (3rd grade and Up)
• Classical Ballet and Pointe (7 yrs old and Up)
• Hip Hop (Kindergarten and Up)
• Contemporary/Modern/Lyrical Jazz (6th grade and Up)
• Acting/Musical Theatre (ages 5 to 14)
• Tumbling (Pre-School and Up)
• Theatre Jazz / Musical Theatre (5 yrs old and Up)
• Hip Hop/Funk/Tap for Boys (4 yrs old and Up)
• Couples /Partners (Kindergarten thru High School)
• Irish Step Dance (2nd grade and Up)
• Clogging ( Middle School and Up)
• Voice (Kindergarten and Up)
• Tap Line Rockettes style(middle school and up)

To learn more, visit Marcia’s website at www.marciasarosikdancers.com.

Marcia Sarosik Dance Studio
2107 James Ave
South Lake Tahoe

(530) 541-7211

It’s a Farm!

No, it’s a museum and fun zone just for kids.

Welcome to the KidZone Museum in Truckee. For kids age 7 and their families.

This place has all kinds of science and art displays, and interactive exhibits (stuff you can touch) so it’s more fun to learn.  On display through 2011 is the Lucky Ducky Farm including an orchard area, a Farmhouse with a child size house with a fully stocked kitchen, and The Barn and Tractor area which allows play with the cows, horses, or goat, dress up in animal or farm costumes or read books about farms in the hayloft.

The KidZone Museum is located next to the Truckee High School at 11711 Donner Pass Road, (530)587-KIDS(5437).

The KidZone Museum is a non-profit organization working off donations only. If you are interested in giving or becoming a member, please call 530-587-KIDS or donate online at www.kidzonemuseum.org.

Did you know the KidZone has its own CD? Check it out.

The KidZone Museum is proud to announce the release of “Tahoe Locals – volume 1,” the first release from the Locals CD Project, showcasing this area’s amazing local artists. The CD can be found at the KidZone Museum, its satellite children’s boutique “The KidZone Treasure Chest,” from local merchants, and online (either as a CD or digital download).

In perhaps an update of the old movie plot (“Hey, we can put on a show right here to raise money for the kids!”), artists throughout the Tahoe area have donated their work for this compilation CD, and all profits go to funding the KidZone Children’s Museum. Although the production effort behind the disc is from the KidZone, the music on the disc itself is hardly “kids’ stuff.”

It reflects the sort of sounds you’d hear from the local artists at the shows around town, featuring original music from stages large and small throughout the Lake Tahoe area. There is quite a variety of music to be heard: from straight-ahead rock to shades of urban, alternative and acoustic. It’s all good, all original, and all local.

Anyone who lives in the Tahoe area or visits with an ear to the sounds around them knows that there is a thriving local music scene here. Whether it’s concerts in parks, beach-fronts, resorts, festivals, bars, clubs, or headline stages, there seems to be music everywhere you go. What has been lacking was a place for the uninitiated to work their way in – to find a way to begin their journey through the variety of music being produced here. The KidZone has stepped-in to fill this void.

Why has the KidZone undertaken a Locals CD Project? Partly because it simply needed to be done, and the KidZone is a great cause for the community to rally-around, but also to stress how music itself is so central to any child’s enrichment.

Music is one of the earliest ways children learn to communicate, and yet it is often overlooked or taken for granted later in life. Throughout our whole lives, art has the ability to communicate with us directly on an emotional level – moving us both to dance and to cry – in a way that words alone simply cannot. Music comes in many forms, with a tremendous variety even in the small corner of the world we call home, and that alone is something to celebrate.

Half of the gym is sectioned off for your playful child/children to bring his/her tricycles to burn up some excess energy, or you can borrow the Recreation Centers’ toys to zoom around. The other half of the gym has mats, balls and a bounce house. The middle of the gym has tables set up for adult talk time.

Mondays 11:00am-1:15pm through March 29, 2010. $2.00 per day per child. No supervision will be provided by city staff so parents need to be present.

The SLT Recreation Center will follow the LTUSD school calendar and will be closed all snow days and School Holidays.

South Lake Tahoe Park and Recreation Department
1180 Rufus Allen Blvd
South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150

For more info, please call (530) 542-6056.

Kids under 12 are free!

Besides the largest collection of outboard motors west of the Mississippi and several historic wooden boats, the Tahoe Maritime Museum features a children’s activity room where kids of all ages can learn interesting facts about boating.  Bring the family for a fun-filled day at the Museum. Learn about Tahoe maritime history while the kids build a boat, make crafts and do a scavenger hunt.

There is even a knot tying wall so young sailors can hone their skills.

Sunday Family Fundays

Every Sunday in November

10 am to 5pm

Adults $5
Members Free
Children under 12 Free

November Museum Hours:  Open Friday – Sunday from 10 am – 5 pm

Tahoe Maritime Museum
5205 West Lake Blvd.
Homewood

For more information about this North Lake Tahoe or the museum, please contact the museum at 530.525.9253.

Mother Goose Rhymes for 0-2 years old take place at the South Lake Tahoe Library every Thursday starting at 11am.

Relive your childhood memories and introduce your kids to the wonderful rhymes of Mother Goose at the local library.

The Eldorado County Library has developed this special program featuring Mother Goose rhymes, music and lap sits for the very young.

Mother Goose on the Loose

Thursdays at 11am, until December 9, 2010

South Lake Tahoe Library Conference room
1000 Rufus Allen Blvd., South Lake Tahoe

For more info, call 530-573-3185

FREE – No reservations needed.

Diddle, diddle, dumpling, my son, John,
Went to bed with his stockings on…

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.
She had so many children, she didn’t know what to do….

All around the mulberry bush the monkey chased the weasel.

This highly interactive production is set in contemporary times and created with the young audience member in mind. The performance is free for kids and their chaperones, and takes place at the Valhalla Boathouse Theatre on August 5, 2011 at 11am and 2pm.

The sorcerer and one-time Duke of Milan, Prospero, and his daughter, Miranda, have been trapped on a tropical island for 12 years. Their only companions are a Monster called Caliban, son of the Witch, who used to rule the Island and Ariel, a spirit loyal and known only to Prospero. As fate would have it, those who betrayed Prospero are brought within the reaches of his powers. His enemies find themselves at the mercy of a great storm and are cast upon the Island.

With Magical Spirits, Monsters and Pirates, the Young Shakespeare production of The Tempest promises to be a fun, interactive show for the entire family.

Although it’s free, reservations are required.  Please call (800) 74-SHOWS.

Young Shakespeare serves as an internship program for young and aspiring actors. The production is run as a fully professional show with eight-hour rehearsal days, over a period of four weeks. It includes a professional costumer, fight director, professional actors, director and stage manager. Each young performer is assigned an actor as a mentor to help guide him or her through the rehearsal process all the way to performance time. The culmination is a one-hour adaptation of a Shakespeare play for the young at heart that tours Reno/Sparks, Fallon, Minden and Tahoe/Truckee regions.