December 3rd Workshop Review

Red Rover, Red Rover, can Jenny come over? Yes she can… Jenny Greene tore herself away from her galactic studies (she can sit inside the telescopes she uses) to host a workshop on the importance of water to life on Earth. Jenny did this by taking us on a quick trip to... Mars!

After an engaging pictorial comparison that went way beyond the obvious Earth blue, Mars red comparisons, Jenny explained that the possibility of life on Mars greatly depends on whether or not that white stuff currently on the surface of Mars - GAK kids correctly guessed that it is ice - hints at water previously on the planet in liquid state.

Green Apple Kids used homemade Play-Doh to create aliens they thought could survive on the planet Mars. Many created humanoid figures in multiple colors (with double mouths, septuple limbs and even scaly bodies). The kids that weren’t sculpting creatures were watching a film (similar to the one below) that documented a Mars rover leaving the Earth’s atmosphere, entering Mars' and making a landing. After the film, GAK kids had a chance to simulate their own rover data collection thanks to scale models brought in by Ms. Greene.

In an attempt to ensure that this verdant planet (Earth) doesn’t look like that barren planet (Mars) in the future, GAK founders Beatrice and Liza explained the importance of conserving wetlands and reducing water waste. Thankfully all of the Green Apple Kids came up with many imaginative ways to use less water in their own homes.


Presenter Jenny Greene (center) enjoying a Green Apple laugh.

Introducing December 6th presenter Jenny Greene

Jenny Greene grew up in the Bronx. She spent many many happy hours in the Public Library as a child, and is thrilled to be working with children in the library now.

Jenny is an astronomer by trade, she spends her days (and nights)observing the sky. In particular she studies black holes, objects so massive and so compact that not even light can escape their gravitational pull. She loves to look through telescopes in Chile to study the sky, because there is a beautiful view of the Milky Way our galaxy.

When she is not working, Jenny teaches algebra in New Jersey prisons. This has taught her that learning is a very powerful force of empowerment, and has emphasized even more strongly how important programs like Green Apple Kids are for our children and society in general.

For Jenny, studying astronomy is a way to understand where we all came from, and because the Universe is just so magnificent and strange. In this Green Apple Kids workshop, we will focus on the wonders of our planet Earth. We will see how lucky we are to have our natural resources, in particularly, water. In contrast our next-door neighbor, Mars, is not so hospitable to life. We will think about ways to preserve our precious resources on this planet, as well as ways to adapt life to more extreme environments.

November 1st Workshop Review

A wise person (I think it was Kevin Costner) once said, “If you build it, they will come.” And the developers in our local community seem to have canonized this quote. Our community’s children know all too well about the current, ever encroaching, building phenomena. Scaffolding inhibits their right of way on sidewalks, building materials litter their parks and the giant, gleaming, monolithic structures generally dwarf their points of view.

Presenter Ilya Korolev helped our kids voice their opinions regarding the current construction boom in the city. First Ilya read from the book 'Where We Live' (Adventures in Architecture by Bode, Achim) pointing the Green Apple Kids’ attentions to pictures of dwellings (both modern and historic) from around the world. The kids engaged in discussions as to why some houses were high in trees, or close to the water or made of certain materials.

Next it was time for our budding builders to create a scale city of their own design, utilizing materials pulled from household recycle bins. Some took the roles of architects, while others worked on interior design. A few kids teamed up to figure out the city’s infrastructure, while one dedicated his time to the inhabitants’ safety and security. And everyone was concerned about clean-up and waste disposal.

The experience encouraged the kids to think of alternate ways in which we can impact our environment through building and also displayed the many occupations that go into making a city function. Can we build it differently? Yes we can!


Presenter Ilya Korolev reading to the Green Apple families

Introducing Our November 1st Presenter...Ilya Korolev

Ilya Korolev was born in Moscow, Russia. As a child he was very curious about how things worked, and often took toys apart to see what was inside.

He studied in Moscow Architecture Institute (Russia), and Pratt Institute School of Architecture in Brooklyn, NY. He is now currently working at Andrew Berman Architect. His current projects include NYPL Branch Libraries and Renovations/additions at PS1 Contemporary Art Center.

Ilya will be taking the Green Apple Kids families on a journey to a land made by children. The importance of sustainable structures will be the underlining theme while we create a city from our imagination by using, old milk and yogurt containers,toilet paper rolls, and other reusable objects that often go straight in to the trash. We will be turning these objects into houses and buildings, and these structures will then form a larger map of a land designed collaboratively by our very own green kids. This activity will engage children's and parent's understanding of urban living and challenge their thinking about their own environment.

October 4th Workshop Review

Tea Bag: a container of thin paper holding tea leaves.

Tee Bag: a fabric container made through the process of refashioning a tee shirt into a shopping bag.

Our last workshop was a stitchin’ good time. The question posed was, How can we recycle t-shirts? And Marge Mendel gave us a smart solution: tee bags. After talking through the process with Green Apple kids and parents, Marge set to work readying her sewing machine while the kids used recycled crayons to make patterns on old t-shirts of their choice. Some made stars, others made numbers and there were those whose abstractions could have passed for Pollock’s. After a parent carefully used a hot iron to make the designs permanent, Marge snipped and stitched and Whallah! fashionable ‘new’ bags for all. The library supplied books for each bag through the Reading is Fundamental (RIF) program and every Green Apple Kid left with an organic green apple.

Below are the three simple steps it takes to create your own 'tee bag' at home:







Have a look at our pictures below of kids decorating and modeling their tee bags (there are lots of pics this week):

Presenter Marge Mendel modeling a tee bag.


Elzbieta Krawczuk explaining the RIF program.