After-School Magic at PS 87

When Executive Director Kyle Ahlrold considers adding a new club to the already remarkable list of after-school offerings at PS 87, the first thing she thinks about is fun. “Who’s going to sign up for the Math Enrichment club?” she asks. But call it “MathMagic,” and first- and second-graders can’t seem to get enough. From “Storybook Cooks” to “Money, Money, Money,” and even “Bloody Shakespeare,” the clubs in this after-school program are clearly designed with kids in mind. 

But don’t let the fun fool you. In every club we visited, kids were learning in powerful ways. We watched two nine-year-old boys in the Robotics Team Challenge club take turns trying out different pieces to get the attachment on the front of their vehicle to raise up. “It’s like a problem we have to solve,” the first boy said to the other. “We just have to keep trying different things, and it might take a long time.” 

Kindergartners learned to measure as they cooked up delicious pancakes from scratch. When it came time to stir the batter, each child took a turn, counting ten strokes in their first language before passing the bowl on for another ten strokes in a new language. 

With the help of talented actors, directors, artists, musicians, choreographers, scientists, and teachers, Kyle has put together an award-winning program. She’s passionate about challenging kids, about finding activities that draw out the best in them and help them learn to work together. “If you put broccoli in front of children, they’ll eat it,” she says as she explains why they replaced board games with chessboards. Nowhere was that truth more apparent than in the faces of the dozen or so kids sitting across from one another in the cafeteria, contemplating their next move.

We couldn’t be more pleased to see how games and activities from AfterSchool KidzLit®, AfterSchool KidzMath™, and Science Explorer have been integrated into different clubs across the week. KidzLit stories provide a rich backdrop for developing skills across the curriculum and are used as springboards into math, science, animation, movie-making, art, cooking, and anything else Kyle and her teachers can imagine.

So just where is the magic in math? One child who joined the club expecting to learn a lot of magic tricks wasn’t quite sure after the first few weeks. But as the club came to an end, she told her teacher, “I get it now. The magic is what happens inside of us when we understand.” 

Could there be any more powerful magic than that?

Check out their program here.