As part of the “Kids Rock for Kids” rock concert series, on Tuesday, Aug. 27 and Wednesday, Aug. 28 more than 100 student musicians, age 8-17, will perform at World Cafe Live (3025 Walnut Street) to raise money for West Philly’s HMS School for Children with Cerebral Palsy. Twenty-five teenage rock bands and seven Glee groups will perform. The shows are a collaboration between World Cafe Live and Music Training Center, where the performers study. Both shows start at 6:30 p.m. and end at 9.

HMS School for Children with Cerebral Palsy, which is located in the Spruce Hill neighborhood at 44th & Baltimore, serves children through age 21 and uses special education, therapy programs and state-of-the-art assistive technology to maximize each child’s abilities and help prepare them for a full, active life in their community.

World Cafe Live’s “Kids Rock for Kids” rock concert series, which raises awareness and money for a different children’s medical charity in the Philadelphia area, debuted in 2006. To date, more than 20 concerts have raised over $10,000 for 24 different charities.

Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for kids. Please note that ticket sales do not include a donation; HMS volunteers will ask for donations during the concert that will benefit HMS’s Scholarship Fund. For more information and to purchase tickets, click here.

Photo via neighborhoodbikeworks.org.

Neighborhood Bike Works, a wonderful local program that provides educational, recreational, and career-building opportunities for urban youth through bicycling, is inviting young West Philadelphians to join their Ride Club this September. Ride club is a new four-week free after-school program for youth ages 8-18. The club will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m. at the Neighborhood Bike Works location at 3916 Locust Walk and program participants will go on fun routes to explore this part of the city and will also get lessons in mechanics, health, and fitness.

All Ride Club participants should know how to ride a bike and must be able to ride 20 minutes without a break. Neighborhood Bike Works can provide youth with a bike and helmet to use during rides.

For more information and to download a registration form, visit: http://www.neighborhoodbikeworks.org/programs/ride_club/

Editor’s Note: West Philly Local contributor and West Philly resident Jen Horner and her son checked on Penn Museum’s 40 Winks with the Sphinx sleepover program a few months ago, but we didn’t get a chance to run the story about their experience because all subsequent sleepovers in the spring/summer were quickly sold out. As tickets for the Fall 2013 – Summer 2014 of 40 Winks with the Sphinx season go on sale today, we are publishing this story now.

Photos by Jen Horner.

It’s funny: Ben Stiller has been very helpful to scientific institutions in their quest to reach young minds and generate new revenue streams. The 2006 movie Night at the Museum is not the only inspiration for overnight kids’ programs – the Franklin Institute has been doing it for years – but I did feel my life imitating art when I took a late night flashlight tour through the mummy chambers of the Penn Museum with my ten-year-old son. “Forty Winks with the Sphinx” is a popular monthly program for kids age 6-12, and while it plays on the premise of the movie, the grandeur of the museum and the enthusiasm of the staff override all residual cheesiness.

We found plenty to like about Forty Winks. From 5:30 until the first scheduled event of at 6:45 we had the run of the museum. Staff and security were on site, and as a bonus, things were set up for the next night’s crazy-lavish wedding. (There were gigantic crystal chandeliers and velvet drapes all over the Egyptian gallery). My son and I had fun following the scavenger hunt booklet. At 6:45, we convened in the auditorium for a short orientation followed by a live “game show” wherein kids examined artifacts from the museum and guessed what they were used for. This moved briskly but lasted long enough for most kids to get a chance on stage.

From 7:45 on, we were free to try four activities, eat dinner (we packed it ourselves), roam the museum, or actually watch the movie Night at the Museum. Of the lessons, we liked the cuneiform best – it’s the ancient Sumerian writing method of pressing patterns into clay. I cannot describe the satisfaction we felt when the instructor looked at my son’s finished clay tablet and read his name out loud! Where else could you meet a person literate in ancient Sumerian? We also learned some Egyptian hieroglyphics, and we had a chance to (respectfully) examine a real Peruvian mummy. Yoga was too crowded so we skipped it.

The best part of the night was the Expedition at 10. Everyone has to bring their own flashlight because they really do turn out the lights. Things were organized so that small groups moved through key exhibits without spoiling the illusion of being alone with the mummies in a vast, dark museum. I must say, the guides – mostly Penn graduate students – were very charming and smart, and good at talking with flashlights in their faces. There is a lot of truly cool stuff in the museum, plus my son met a fellow Angry Birds fan. By 11:30-ish, after negotiating the crowded restrooms, we ended up back in the Sphinx room for lights out.  Continue Reading

The Woodlands Mansion and Cemetery is partnering with The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University to bring a very cool event to nature lovers of all ages. On Tuesday, Aug. 6 everyone is invited to the Firefly Night  from 7-9 p.m. at the cemetery at 40th and Woodland. Bring your blankets, picnic and flashlights and witness these wonderful glowing bugs that the Woodlands grounds are full of after dark.

Insect experts from the Academy of Natural Sciences will be on hand to share their knowledge and expertise with buggy activities, live insects, and a one-size-fits-all firefly costume for visitors to try on. The Lil’ Pop Shop, a local artisan popsicle shop, will be onsite too with their popsicle truck.

This event coincides with the exhibit Glow: Living Lights, which is currently on display at the Academy of Natural Sciences (until Sept 29, 2013). Glow: Living Lights takes visitors on a journey through land and sea in pursuit of creatures with the incredible ability to produce their own light. Fireflies are some of the few animals lighting up the dark through a mysterious process called bioluminescence. For more information, visit The Woodlands website.

Come this fall, Mighty Writers will ink its missive on the streets of West Philly.

The beloved Philly nonprofit dedicated to teaching Philadelphia’s youth to think and write with clarity will open its third location, Mighty Writers West, housed in People’s Emergency Center at 3861 Lancaster Avenue. Fall programs will launch September 16, and former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Annette John-Hall will serve as Mighty Writers West program director.

This is a new Mighty Writers site in West Philly. They are looking for someone who can replace the words “Make Your Mark” with “Mighty Writers.” (Photo via Mighty Writers’ Facebook page).

“We’re excited because the kids and volunteers we meet in West Philly will define the flavor of Mighty Writers West,” Maggie Leyman, Mighty Writers’ development director, told West Philly Local.  “We’ll incorporate a lot of what we’ve learned in South Philly, but we can’t wait to learn what gets West Philly kids excited, and what gets them writing.”

According to Leyman,opening locations in the North, South and West locations of Philadelphia was Mighty Writers’ intention from the start, as the non-profit’s “honing in on three neighborhoods” it sees as underserved and “reasonably far apart.” In West Philadelphia, she said, Mighty Writers will be able to reach those kids who have traveled to the South Philadelphia location for past workshops, as well as kids who wouldn’t travel to either location, but are interested in its programs. Still, the non-profit does understand that the entire city “needs more accessible and free out-of-school programs.”

“Our executive director, Tim Whitaker, always says that you could put a Mighty Writers, or pretty much any writing program, every ten blocks and you’d see programs filled to capacity,” Leyman told West Philly Local. “The whole city is underserved, as far as kids’ educations are concerned. We wish we could put a Mighty Writers in even more Philly communities but that would take some serious funding.”

Mighty Writers will host an open house at the new location in early September “to welcome people into Mighty Writers West so they can sign up for programs, meet our staff and volunteers, and see what we’re all about,” said Leyman.

Mighty Writers West is also currently accepting applications for its afterschool program for students in grades 5-8 residing or going to school in one of the following ZIP codes: 19104, 19131, 19139 or 19143. For more info and to download an application, click here. Application deadline is August 15, 2013.

–Annamarya Scaccia

Little Green School House teachers (from left to right) Tyler Colvard, Dionne Wright-Chambers, and Rowan Machalow.

Rowan Machalow and her partner Tyler Colvard, both teachers, are opening a new preschool this fall, called The Little Green School House, at their home located near 45th and Walnut (219 S. Melville St). Apart from teaching music, art, yoga, science, reading readiness, math, and drama, the school will have a special emphasis on living green – kids will also be learning things like “composting in a worm bin, planting and growing food they can eat, preparing and eating local veggies, cleaning and beautifying our block, visiting a local chicken coop, sorting materials for recycling, and using recycled materials to create art.”

The preschool will have full-day and half-day options and will only have 12 spots available, since Rowan and Tyler would like to “keep it pretty small.” Besides them, there will be two other qualified teachers in the program. Kids from almost 2 years old through 3rd grade (for after school programs) are welcome to apply. You can check out the space and meet the teachers at one of the Open Houses – on Tuesday, July 30 and Friday, Aug 16, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. For more information, visit www.littlegreenschoolhousepa.com, email info@littlegreenschoolhousepa.com or call 215-222-0208.