Enrichment Program Includes Music Classes

Hoping to help fill a void created by recent school district budget cuts, Learn Inc., a summer school enrichment program, will beef up its musical offerings this year.

Laguna Enrichment and Resource Network will offer beginning, intermediate and concert band classes for children in the fourth through ninth grades and song flute classes for third- and fourth-grade students.

Jeff Foster, a teacher in Laguna Beach Unified School District, will lead the band classes, said Gene Gravley, president of Learn.

“This year in particular, because of the recent budget constraints, they’ve had to cut a lot of programs,” Gravley said. “The idea is to bring back this summer some opportunities . . . lost during the school year.”

Learn’s Summer Fun School is for children in kindergarten through ninth grade. The four-week program begins June 30 and costs $240. Classes are at Top of the World Elementary School on Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon.

Children select three options from a list of 24 electives, including science, literature, art, drama, writing and magic classes.

Academic chess, which Gravley called “the latest learning craze,” is being offered this year for the first time.

Continuing for a second year is Flying For Kids, which teaches fourth- through seventh-graders how to build model airplanes, read maps and speak “pilot talk,” Gravley said. “It turns kids on when they start to learn a little bit about aviation and how it works.”

Learn Inc., a nonprofit corporation, has been offering classes since 1984. Last year, 320 children from Laguna Beach and surrounding areas participated.

Class brochures are available at Sports World, 290 Broadway, Laguna Beach.

Information: (714) 497-6011.