From Fire and Knives to Blindfold Chess: Enrichment Offers Fresh Experiences and Lasting Skills | News

December 9th 2025

It’s around noon on an overcast Friday in late October. The school day is over for the gaggle of kindergarteners huddled in the main field. Yet their work isn’t done.

Together, they eye with excitement–and some trepidation–a formidable obstacle course.

“I can do it. I can do it.” The first kid on deck murmurs to himself, and then he’s off.

He crosses a slender balance beam resting on several foam block risers. Then he hurls himself at a wedge-shaped mat known as “the cheese,” knocking it to the ground.

Triumphant, he exalts, “It’s so fun, guys. It’s so fun doing the cheese!”

A few hundred yards away on the upper turf, another group of littles has gathered for a different purpose. They stand side-by-side on colorful mats, in stockinged feet—though one holdout still sports her sparkly cowboy boots. An instructor hands out pictures of cartoon animals in various poses for each kid to emulate.

“I can literally do that. It’s literally so easy,” one confident yogi responds. Others proclaim their assignments “too hard.” Yet soon tiny arms extend up to the sky and down to the ground. Legs shoot out in energetic arabesques—to form the world’s cutest trees, warriors, and downward dogs.

Why Enrichment

This flurry of activity is the first session of Enrichment for the day, which caters to the youngest Park students who are dismissed at noon on Fridays. The cheese-tacklers are participants in a class called Lil’ Ninjas. The other crew, of course: Pre-K and Kindergarten Yoga.

As the rest of the lower division lets out, the buzz on campus will only increase. Sneakers will pound on gravel as the Girls on the Run cohort trains for a 5K. Video Game enthusiasts will complete sports challenges in Game Show, and martial arts practitioners will convene in the gym to study jiu-jitsu.

Enrichment courses—extra-curricular after-school classes offered at Park—offer a fun and easy way for students to develop skills and explore new interests.

“What I love about the Enrichment program is that it caters to many different versions of what kids need at the end of the school day,” says the Director of Enrichment, Jordan Burnham-Bialik. “Quieter, calmer classes where kids are building with Legos. Energetic [classes] where kids are dancing their hearts out. We have the flexibility to do that.”

Jordan, who is in their first year at the helm of the program, says the best moments in Enrichment happen when kids stumble upon a new passion. “My favorite time is when kids discover something they’d really love to continue with,” they explained.

There are many reasons why families opt into Enrichment at Park. There is, of course, the convenience factor, and the opportunity to deepen school friendships. There are potential cost benefits—families enrolled in ASP on the same day as an enrichment class get a 50% discount on Enrichment, and Park financial aid applies to Enrichment at the same rate as ASP.

Perhaps most excitingly, the Enrichment program is integrated into Park’s pedagogy both philosophically and practically. This past fall, for instance, Enrichment offered a Greek Mythology Art class taught by Diana Stelin, which dovetailed perfectly with a key unit in Park’s fourth-grade curriculum. Diana even connected with Park’s Grade 4 Coordinator, Isa Moss, to share ideas.

Park parents may have noticed some changes to Enrichment under Jordan’s leadership this year, such as a new catalog format, easily searchable by grade level, and a new registration process that has shifted from a lottery to first-come, first-serve. The latter change was made to help parents more easily plan their schedules and to allow extra sessions to be added when there is demand.

Also new this year: a slew of eye-catching course offerings like “Fire & Knives,” a wilderness skills class in which students as young as kindergarten really do make fire and practice safely using knives. Or “Blindfold Chess,” which coaches would-be Kasparovs to visualize a game of chess without needing to look at the board.

Better Together

When planning the Enrichment schedule, Jordan seeks out novel options that “Kids and their families might not have experienced.” They also prioritize transferable skills that can help a child in other areas of their life.

“A lot of what comes out of enrichment spaces, in particular, are social-emotional skills and collaboration skills,” said Jordan.

These soft skills are on full display when a group of second and third-graders joins Marisol Chupas, a teacher from Hipstitch, to work on fiber arts.

The kids voted on their activity the previous week, and with Halloween fast approaching, they are excited to make ghosts. Marisol passes out handmade cardboard cutouts and empties a bag of colorful scraps onto the table to be glued on the boards.

Everyone dives right in, and an order among the sorting quickly emerges. One crafter wants orange bits of fabric for their ghost; another purple, but only a very particular pattern of purple; yet another is in search of a long strip to fashion a belt. Impressively, it’s not an every-kid-for-themselves situation—the crew works together as a team to distribute the desired fabrics to each party.

“And another one for you, and another one for you,” they say to each other.

“This is fun,” second-grader Owen declares repeatedly. “This is actually better because we are all collecting the stuff together. It makes it really fun.”

Collaboration isn’t the only value young crafters are learning. Zuzu, also in second grade, enjoys this class because you can “learn from your mistakes.” She recounts a time when a weaving project initially went awry. “I was doing it too thinly,” she recalls. “But I went back and did it again, and it turned into something beautiful.”

Learn more about Music Enrichment here.