Dear KidsOutAndAbout readers:
Back-to-School means Back-to-After-School! This is KidsOutAndAbout's special annual newsletter detailing extracurricular programs for the 2018-2019 year! This resource is guaranteed to give you ideas for programs you never even knew existed! YOU'LL WANT TO SAVE THIS NEWSLETTER, so keep it in a handy place where you can refer to it often as you're considering options for your kids' enrichment. (If you get this at work, you might want to forward it to your home email address.)
We have descriptions from many programs that have chosen to be featured in this resource; they are for every age and interest, from babies through teens. Get some great ideas for after-school and weekend stuff your kids can do right here in one handy spot.
Be sure to check out (and bookmark!) the Master List of Extracurricular Classes page on the KidsOutAndAbout site. We have subject links for programs in sports & Fitness, gymnastics, martial arts, performing arts, music, dance, visual arts, brainy stuff, special needs, preschool, and more. This page is a portal to hundreds of organizations that offer classes in our area and will be an invaluable resource in your planning this year.
NOTE: THIS NEWSLETTER IS LONG, and so some email programs may cut it off heartlessly in the middle. If that happens, just use the handy "View this email in a browser" link at the top to see it in all its glory.
Happy back-to-school!
—Debra Ross, Publisher, KidsOutAndAbout.com
Art Haus offers painting, drawing, and pottery classes to children and adults. We also offer specialty art classes like figure drawing, paint nights, weekly workshops, and children’s summer workshops. Our hours are Tuesday through Saturday at convenient hours to accommodate your busy schedule. Come join us for classes and discover the benefits of expressing yourself through art!
Click here for more information.
CrEATe Cooking Classes for Kids
CrEATe cooking classes are specifically designed to inspire children ages 4 and up. We love to have fun while we learn, and so do our little chefs! With silly yet memorable lessons, we learn what NOT to do in the kitchen as much as the wonderful things we can do! Your budding chefs will be proud to bring home a sampling of what they've created as they develop this SKILL FOR LIFE!
Click here for more information.
Easton Salt Lake Archery Center
Whether you are just starting out in the sport or preparing for world competition, you can get the training you need to be your best. The Easton Salt Lake Archery Center is one of a growing number of Easton Foundations archery facilities across the USA. Whether you are a beginner or a seasoned competitor, the Easton Salt Lake Archery Center will help foster your enjoyment and skill of the sport. In addition to archery classes and group lessons, we also offer private coaching, archery instructor certification, video analysis, private events, seminars and tournaments.
Click here for more information.
We believe that art education is really important for kids—and it’s not just about the opportunity to be crafty! Good art education that is fun, creative, and built on strong art fundamentals can equip kids with skills that will help them thrive in any life path. STEM education gives them a valuable skill set, but art training teaches them how to approach any job or situation with creativity. Art teaches ingenuity and patience. Art is also a fantastic outlet for stress and anxiety. Our kids really need art in their lives! We’re excited to bring high quality, fun, art education to the Highland, Alpine, and Cedar Hills Communities.
Click here for more information.
More than just a sport. Our mission is... To provide athletes, parents, and employees with a positive experience in the sport of gymnastics. To challenge each athlete within his/her abilities, while teaching valuable life skills such as dedication, determination, discipline, and confidence. To offer high quality equipment, a fun and safe environment, and a knowledgeable and positive coaching staff, with the ultimate goal of encouraging each participant to achieve his/her highest potential. To offer open lines of communication to athletes and parents. To treat each athlete with equal importance regardless of skill level. To continually strive for excellence in all areas of training young athletes in the sport of gymnastics.
Click here for more information.
We believe that kids are natural Yoginis because of their “in the moment” attitude, innate flexibility, and unlimited potential for growth; that balanced lives begin with balanced children; and that through Yoga, we can positively affect the health, well-being, and confidence of the next generation. Next Generation Yoga encourages children to use their whole bodies, independent minds, and intuitive senses as we engage and educate their entire beings. We respect and encourage the developmental and individual needs of every child. Kids use their natural energy and enthusiasm to move, play, imagine and express themselves as they explore mindfulness, body awareness, positive health and Mother Earth.
Click here for more information.
Rinceoiri Don Spraoi Irish Dancers
We are a performance-centered school that provides an Irish dance education solely for the love of Irish culture and dance. We perform throughout Utah at events such as the Living Traditions Festival, Utah Scottish Festival, and the Utah State Fair, along with other public and private events such as elementary schools, cultural festivals, farmers markets, senior centers and more. Our biggest event of the year is the Utah Hibernian Society’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade and Siamsa in March!
Click here for more information.
Have you always wanted to ride a horse but feel like you don't have the time, space, or means to own one? Do you or your kids want to experience the magic of learning horsemanship? Serendipity Stables is a non-competitive barn with a positive atmosphere. Our philosophy is safe horsemanship and riding in harmony with the horse. We have adult and child horseback riding lessons and boarding.
Click here for more information.
Sport City offers year round options for the youth athlete. Find leagues, summer sports, camps, clinics, tournaments, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and fitness all in one location. With 80,000 square feet of premium courts and fields including 2 turf fields, 2 full futsal courts, 6 volleyball courts, 4 basketball courts, and a fitness studio, we are Utah's premier indoor sports facility. We will provide you with the best experience for leagues, tournaments, practice, corporate events, and more! Contact us at info@soccercityutah.com or by phone at 801-553-0096.
Click here for more information.
Spy Hop’s mission is to mentor young people in the digital media arts to help them find their voice, tell their stories, and be empowered to effect positive change in their lives, their communities, and the world. We envision a world in which all young people possess the skills and mindsets necessary for future success and that their voices are heard and valued in their communities. Since 1999, Spy Hop has mentored Utah’s young people in the digital media arts as a vehicle for free expression, self-discovery, critical thinking, and skilled participation. Our after school and community programs in film, audio, music, and design are a model for youth development programs across the nation and Spy Hop is recognized by the White House as a leading nonprofit arts and humanities organization.
Click here for more information.
Studio Kids Productions LLC is a children's theater organization committed to enhancing music, dance, theater, and arts education in Utah. Our curriculum is fun and friendly and encourages kids to develop acting skills, learn simple choreography, develop stage presence, learn fundamental music skills, explore their creativity, and develop confidence. Studio Kids Productions LLC offers programs in voice, dance, and drama. Each program features the students in a final performance at the end of each semester. Costumes, stage make-up, and curriculum materials are provided as part of the program.
Click here for more information.
At The Little Gym, we believe kids should be able to act like kids. We also believe fun environments are especially conducive to the kind of learning that prepares them for life’s adventures. Through unique programs that revolve around active play, we complement and enhance the traditional school experience - even before kids are school age! We give children a safe and inspiring space to direct their energy, build confidence, and develop key skills. Explore the range of classes we offer at The Little Gym of Draper to find the one that’s just right for your child.
Click here for more information.
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The Tip of the Radiation Disaster Iceberg
By John LaForge
769 words
The World Nuclear Association says its goal is “to increase global support for nuclear energy” and it repeatedly claims on its website: “There have only been three major accidents across 16,000 cumulative reactor-years of operation in 32 countries.” The WNA and other nuclear power supporters acknowledge Three Mile Island in 1979 (US), Chernobyl in 1986 (USSR), and Fukushima in 2011 (Japan) as “major” disasters. Claiming that these radiation gushers were the worst ignores the frightening series of large-scale disasters that have been caused by uranium mining, reactors, nuclear weapons, and radioactive waste. Some of the world’s other major accidental radiation releases indicate that the Big Three are just the tip of the iceberg.
CHALK RIVER (Ontario), Dec. 2, 1952: The first major commercial reactor disaster occurred at this Canadian reactor on the Ottawa River when it caused a loss-of-coolant, a hydrogen explosion and a meltdown, releasing 100,000 curies of radioactivity to the air. In comparison, the official government position is that Three Mile Island released about 15 curies, although radiation monitors failed or went off-scale.
ROCKY FLATS (Colorado), Sept. 11, 1957: This Cold War factory produced plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons 16 miles from Denver. The accident caused 30 to 44 pounds of breathable plutonium-239 and plutonium-240 to catch fire in what would come to be known as the second largest industrial fire in US history. Filters used to trap the plutonium were destroyed and it escaped through chimneys, contaminating parts of Denver. Nothing was done to warn or protect downwind residents.
WINDSCALE/SELLAFIELD (Britain), Oct. 7, 1957: The worst of many fires burned through one reactor at Windscale, igniting three tons of uranium and dispersing radionuclides over parts of England and northern Europe. The site was hastily renamed Sellafield. Another large radiation leak occurs in 1981 and leukemia rates soared to triple the national average.
KYSHTYM/CHELYABINSK-65 (Russia), Sept. 29, 1957: A tank holding 70-80 metric tons of highly radioactive liquid waste exploded, contaminating an estimated 250,000 people, and permanently depopulating 30 towns, which were leveled and removed from Russian maps. Covered up by Moscow (and the CIA) until 1989, Russia finally revealed that 20 million curies of long-lived isotopes like cesium were released, and the release was later declared a Level 6 disaster on the International Nuclear Event Scale. The long covered-up explosion contaminated up to 10,000 square miles making it one of the most serious radiation accidents ever recorded.
SANTA SUSANA (Simi Valley, Calif.), July 12, 1959: The meltdown of the Sodium Reactor Experiment just outside Los Angeles caused “the third largest release of iodine-131 in the history of nuclear power,” according to Arjun Makhajani, President of the Institute for Energy & Environmental Research. Released radioactive materials were never authoritatively measured because “the monitors went clear off the scale,” according to an employee. The accident was kept secret for 20 years.
CHURCH ROCK (New Mexico), July 16, 1979: Ninety-three million gallons of liquid uranium mine wastes and 1,000 tons of solid wastes spilled onto the Navajo Nation and into Little Puerco River, and nuclear officials called it “the worst incident of radiation contamination in the history of the United States.” The Little Puerco feeds the Little Colorado River, which drains to the Colorado River, which feeds Lake Mead—a source of drinking water for 20 million peoplein three states.
TOMSK-7 (Russia), April 7, 1993: In “the worst radiation disaster since Chernobyl,” Russian and foreign experts said a tank of radioactive waste exploded at the Tomsk nuclear weapons complex and that wind blew its plume of radiation toward the Yenisei River and 11 Siberian villages, none of which were evacuated.
MONJU (Japan), Dec. 8, 1995: This sodium-cooled “breeder reactor” caused a fire and a large leak of sodium coolant into the Pacific. Liquid sodium coolant catches fire on contact with air and explodes on contact with water. Costly efforts to engineer commercial models have failed. Japan’s Monju experiment was halted in 2018 after more than 24 years of false starts, accidents and cover-ups.
TOKAI-MURA (Japan), Sept. 30, 1999: A uranium “criticality,” which is an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction, caused a “neutron burst” that killed three workers and dispersed neutron radiation throughout the densely populated urban area surrounding the factory.
Not to be slighted, deliberate contamination has also been enormous: Five metric tons of plutonium was dispersed over the earth by nuclear bomb testing, and other nuclear weapons processes; more than 210 billion gallons of radioactive liquids were poured into the ground at the Hanford reactor complex in Washington State; and 16 billion gallons of liquid waste holding 70,000 curies of radioactivity were injected directly into Idaho’s Snake River Aquifer at the Idaho National Lab.
-end –
John LaForge, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States.
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Preventing Nuclear War: A National Campaign Emerges
by Robert F. Dodge, MD
657 words
A national collaborative grassroots coalition to abolish nuclear weapons is rapidly emerging in this country. The effort called “Back from the Brink: A Call to Prevent Nuclear War” started last fall after the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by 122 nations with the U.S. and other nuclear nations boycotting. The campaign endorses the Treaty and important protective policies such as ending the President’s sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear attack, renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first, taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert, and canceling U.S. plans to replace its entire nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons. This Call was crafted by dozens of organizations including Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Soka Gakkai International.
Nationally this effort is bringing together social, environmental and economic justice communities recognizing that their concerns are all connected and that there is no greater insult, impact or effect to each of these than nuclear war. Our families, children and communities have a right to exist in a world free of this threat.
The driving force for this movement has been the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons and the recognition that there is no meaningful medical or humanitarian response to nuclear war. It is fitting that in August, 73 years after the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6thand 9th, 1945 respectively that significant progress was made in the U.S toward the elimination of these weapons.
Following the U.S. Council of Mayors’ unanimous adoption of the Resolution at their annual June meeting in Boston where it was sponsored by Mayor Franklin Cownie of Des Moines, Iowa, the Los Angeles and Baltimore City Councils unanimously adopted the Resolution. Eleven other cities around the nation as well as more than 150 faith organizations, civic groups, and thousands of individuals have done so as well.
Taking the national lead, the California Legislature passed Assemblywoman Monique Limón’s AJR 33 in the State Assembly on August 20th and Senate on August 28th. This measure from the nation’s largest state and 6th largest global economy, urges our federal leaders and our nation to embrace the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, to make nuclear disarmament the centerpiece of our national security policy, and to spearhead a global effort to prevent nuclear war. The Call itself empowers everyone from individual citizens to organizations, communities and states to take action in the international movement to abolish nuclear weapons.
The rest of the world is speaking out for nuclear disarmament as the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is being ratified. Once ratified by 50 nation states, it will ban nuclear weapons, just as every other weapon of mass destruction including chemical and biological weapons have been banned. Open for signature since last September, presently there are 60 nations that have signed the Treaty and 14 nations who have ratified it, the latest being New Zealand in July.
We the people of the U.S. must join this international effort. As the only nuclear nation to have used these immoral weapons and one who maintains 45 percent of the 14,400 global weapons, we have a moral and legal responsibility; as a signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) we promised to work for the complete abolition of these weapons.
Nuclear war must never be fought and cannot be won. The only way to prevent this is by the complete abolition of these weapons. The existence of these weapons and the threat they pose is a threat that does not have to be. This is a threat invented by man and is a threat that man can eliminate. It is not a threat that will magically go away or that “they” will take care of. It is a threat that we the people must demand be eliminated. In a functional democracy, it is imperative that all citizens make their voices heard.
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Robert Dodgewrites for PeaceVoice, is a family physician practicing in Ventura, California, is the Co-Chair of the Security Committee of National Physicians for Social Responsibilityand is the President of Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles. Physicians for Social Responsibility received the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. Their international affiliate, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War launched the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in 2007. ICAN is the recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.
