HuckleBerry
Center for Creative Learning
Cynthia Kimura
Cynthia Kimura is a financial mentor guiding young minds towards a future of financial literacy and responsibility. With a passion for empowering students with the knowledge and skills to make informed financial decisions. She brings a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm to her role as an educator with 16 years teaching experience.
Her journey into the world of personal finance began during her own childhood, where she learned the value of money through hands-on experience managing her savings at an early age. This exposure sparked her interest in financial education and planted the seeds for her studies leading to her degree in Consumer Science.
She has volunteered at Dr. William Buckner's Consumer Counseling Center, where she gained valuable experience working with individuals and families navigating through the complexities of budgeting and debt.
Cynthia has gained additional financial experience through her employment as an account for Pioneer Electronics. She became a real estate investor in 2009 and currently manages rental properties for her company. Cynthia is looking forward to creating a dynamic learning environment where students are encouraged to explore topics such as budgeting, saving, spending, and entrepreneurship.
By instilling financial literacy at an early age, Cynthia believes, we can empower students to make sound financial decisions, avoid debt, and achieve their short and long-term goals.
Living Science II
Living Science 2 is a hands-on, inquiry-based science course that takes students deeper into real-world investigations in life and Earth science. Through creative projects, students become young scientists—asking questions, making discoveries, and connecting what they learn to the world around them.
By the end of the year, students will think and work like real scientists and engineers, using evidence to ask questions, test ideas, and solve problems across Earth science, life science, and physical science. They will understand how living things survive in extreme environments, how Earth’s systems are constantly changing and reshaping the planet, and how energy moves through electricity, circuits, and magnetism. Through hands-on investigations, modeling, and design challenges, students will build the skills to analyze data, explain natural phenomena, and create solutions—leaving the year as confident, curious problem-solvers who see science as a way to understand and improve the world around them.
Fall
Extreme Survivors of Earth
Students begin the year as scientists and engineers, strengthening their use of the scientific method to ask testable questions, design investigations, analyze data, and support conclusions with evidence. They will explore how organisms survive in Earth’s most extreme environments by studying adaptations, ecosystems, and limiting factors.
Super Chill: Arctic & Antarctic Ecosystems
Investigate how organisms survive in extreme cold environments by studying insulation, hibernation, migration, and behavioral adaptations in polar ecosystems.
Beat the Heat: Desert Survival Systems
Examine how plants and animals adapt to extreme heat and water scarcity through structural, behavioral, and physiological adaptations in desert biomes.
Masters of the Deep: Ocean Zone Extremes
Explore life in the deep ocean where sunlight does not reach and pressure is extreme, focusing on bioluminescence, food chains, and adaptations to high-pressure environments.
Ultimate Survivors: Extremophiles & Resilient Species
Study organisms that survive in extreme conditions such as high radiation, freezing temperatures, or low oxygen, and analyze what makes these life forms uniquely adapted for survival.
Big Idea of the Unit
Organisms survive in extreme environments through specialized adaptations that allow them to respond to environmental pressures and maintain life in challenging ecosystems.
Winter
Extreme Earth: Dynamic Planet Systems
Students will investigate how Earth’s systems constantly interact and change the planet’s surface. Through models, data analysis, and hands-on investigations, they will study how internal and external forces shape some of Earth’s most extreme environments.
Ocean Floors: Mapping the Deep
Explore the structure of the ocean floor, including continental shelves, abyssal plains, and deep-sea trenches. Students will analyze how scientists use sonar and mapping technology to study areas that are otherwise inaccessible.
Hot Springs: Earth’s Geothermal Energy
Investigate how heat from Earth’s interior drives geothermal features like hot springs and geysers, and examine how dissolved minerals and underground water systems interact beneath the surface.
Volcanoes: Earth’s Internal Energy Release
Study plate tectonics, magma movement, and eruption types to understand how volcanic activity shapes landforms and impacts ecosystems and human populations.
Icebergs: Glacial Systems in Motion
Examine how glaciers form, move, and break apart into icebergs, and analyze the relationship between temperature, density, and freshwater distribution in polar regions.
Big Idea of the Unit
Earth is a dynamic system shaped by internal heat, moving plates, water systems, and climate processes that continuously reshape its surface over time.
Spring:
Energize It!: Electricity, Circuits & Magnetism
Students will investigate how energy is transferred and transformed through electrical and magnetic systems. Through hands-on experiments and engineering design challenges, they will explore how circuits work, how electricity flows, and how magnets create forces without direct contact.
Electricity: Energy in Motion
Explore how electrical energy is generated, transferred, and used in everyday systems, and identify conductors and insulators that control the flow of electricity.
Circuits: Pathways for Energy
Build and analyze both simple and series/parallel circuits to understand how electricity flows in closed loops and how components like switches, bulbs, and batteries interact.
Magnetism: Invisible Forces
Investigate magnetic fields, poles, and forces of attraction and repulsion, and examine how magnets interact with different materials and each other.
Engineering Challenge: Power It Up!
Apply knowledge of circuits and magnetism to design and build functional models such as alarms, switches, or magnetic tools that solve real-world problems.
Big Idea of the Unit
Energy can be transferred and transformed through electric and magnetic systems, and engineers design circuits and devices to control and use that energy in useful ways.