We were thinking of moving but questioned whether we could duplicate some of the things that DD was doing outside of school.

Her Chinese class up at Columbia on Sat is 2.5 hours long, with online homework. It really is an excellent language class.

The American Museum of Natural History offers classes by age group which are indepth, use the museum's resources, displays, materials. DD is doing earth events, they look at the museum's model of them mantle then watch the seismograph of earthquakes happening around the world. They got to touch a cat's brain in vet science last semester. She is 6 and in grade 1.

I did not see a similar school year long, weekly class that was similar. So I am asking people what they found.

Ren

I don't imagine you will find duplicates, but a lot of large metropolitan areas have excellent programs available on weekends and in the summer. Where are you thinking about moving to?

I don't know, where are you thinking of moving? My dad has always called L.A. the land of opportunity and it has an endless summer.

Where we live the big cultural opportunity is the kids get to raise 4H animals for auction after they turn 9yrs old. But everybody hunts deer, so maybe you can call it dissecting when you cut them up to make tamales. Lol, joke.
For Chinese there's Active Chinese . Com, Skyppe tutors, or like I did buy a region 0 DVD player online and Chinese dvd's (we have Cars, Monsters Inc., and ((blushes)) Kung Fu Panda. (go ahead, egg me for that one). NASCO catalog sells a little pig you can dissect. Yes, I have too much time on my hands. And the hubby moved me too far away from Walmart and the mall to do my impulse shopping there. If you find a good place to live you can always vacation cool places.

Raleigh N.C. has gotten good reviews and they have a intellectual college crowd, beach/marine bio stuff nearby, and Duke Tip kids programs. I'll keep dreaming and posting.

Just exploring. One option is Toronto but I couldn't find any good science programs that started before high school. Her science program at the museum is really so good compared to anything I found. Even if you find some weekend classes, the resources they have are pretty amazing. And they have lots of money to provide good teachers and supplies.

So I was calling out to see what others have found.

Ren

St. Paul (MN) has a great science museum with a lot of good summer classes, and they often have classes during the year as well (honestly, as we only have used the summer programs, I don't pay as much attention to the ones during the year). I am not sure they have something weekly that you can just sign up for, but there are a lot of offerings.

I'm not sure about Chinese, but I am guessing in a metropolitan area this big there are programs (I know of a good Japanese program, but Chinese just isn't on my radar...).

We're in St. Paul - you can find about anything you want to do here. I know kids taking Chinese, French, German. My kids take Spanish. There are immersion schools for all of these within 15 minutes of our house. The science museum is amazing - my 10 year old is taking a genetics class there at the moment and took evolutionary biology earlier in the year. (Teacher has master's degree - great hands on) There are 2 smaller science museum that offers great classes/camps too (The Works, The Bakken). Leonardo's basement is great, there are children's orchestra concerts, theaters galore that all offer classes, the institute of art, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, U of MN GT Math programming, Edina Center for Excellece (offering math enrichment on the weekends). MacPhail center for music is excellent. Minnesota History Center has a fantastic network of museums, historical sites that offer kids programming. My kids take circus arts classes and my daughter takes dance. I've found the programming locally to be high quality. There is really too much available - I find it even hard to pick and choose. There is also a very active GT parenting community (MCGT - MN council for gifted talented).


Edited - thought of one more local resource for classes/enrichment. Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth has Saturday programming for 1st grade and up and summer camps. There are also a number of gifted magnet schools throughout the cities.

My dds have tried some science programs at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and usually found the ones for the elementary crowd to be kind of young and lacking in depth. They weren't bad, just not really geared toward kids who want more than surface info. They did enjoy marine biologist and zoologist for a day classes at the Denver aquarium.

We don't live in Denver, so it was a bit of a drive and I'm not as sure about ongoing classes like you describe since I wouldn't have been able or willing to make weekly or more frequent drives there for a class. Like others, I suspect that you'd need to be near a big city for any likelihood of finding the types of programs you have now. The question then becomes whether they are as deep and challenging give her age and that programs geared toward that age often come across as shallow or patronizing to kids who want to be talked to like little adults.

This is a great point. I find that we've had to watch age ranges and pick and choose to find reasonable fit for enrichment. I've had my son in programming for GT kids that has been shallow and mediocre. I've had him in more standard programming at the younger end of the age range with fantastic teachers that taught in a more open ended way and had a great experience. Sometimes he enjoys classes just because he can be with other kids who like science or math. It is an ever moving target and a constant experiment.

It sounds like MN has some great classes.

It is interesting to hear about different areas and what is available. I am finding DD's science classes to be really good. Not that "standard programming at the younger end of the age) but more accelerated for the age group. The topics are diverse, though all natural sciences, and fun too.

I was just shocked Toronto didn't have any at the museums.

I hope others will respond since it would be good to share this kind of info.

I saw you were looking at Toronto...

My DS is very little, so we're not looking for stuff like that yet, but... I'm really not convinced there's a heck of a lot in Toronto. The Science Center seems to have ads for some cool stuff, mostly short-term, though. There seems to be an undercurrent of "good for you" thinking that tends to make kids' programmes a bit drab.

Now. Chinese you should have no trouble finding here. Probably your pick of dialects, too, and heck she can probably pick up a practice conversation with a native speaker on any public transit ride

Arts and culture stuff,esp "multicultural" stuff will probably be easier to find than sciencey stuff. But maybe if you catch into the right subculture a whole pile of things will suddenly appear. TO can be pretty silo-like.

I don't know if you've lived here, but it can feel like a whole series of small hic-towns embedded in an annoying network of Big City(tm). On the other hand, there are great little villages that can only thrive in a place with a lot of people (that draw unique interests and intensity levels), too. The trick is hooking into them.

Good luck.
-Mich