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.
Food Science I
Get ready to stir, mix, whisk, and wonder. This hands-on course where the kitchen becomes your science lab and every tasty treat is a learning opportunity! In this deliciously interactive class, explore the fascinating world of science through cooking, with food that you can actually eat. From fizzy drinks and gooey desserts to color-changing concoctions, investigate real scientific principles behind everyday foods.
Whip up creative cuisine to learn the related science behind your creation. Recipes will coincide with actual scientific facts.
Below are just a few tastes of what is in store for you! Students will work with food, create something edible, and learn about science! We’ll follow the scientific method by wondering what will happen first, and then testing it! What makes cookies flat or raised? What is the role of an egg? (Or a flax egg?) What’s the difference between baking soda and baking powder? Perfect for budding scientists, curious cooks, and food lovers of all kinds, this course brings science to life in the most flavorful way possible. Come hungry for knowledge and ready to cook up some science you can taste.
Fun experiments answering the questions of
How does ice cream form? Why are ingredients heated and the frozen? What’s AIR got to do with it?
Why does popcorn pop?
What makes some foods taste spicy?
We’ll delve into cookie chemistry and find out how cookies go into an oven as a gooey, sticky ball and come out a flat, firm, round disc. We’ll discover what surface tension is and why it’s important in baking! Cinnamon will show us the way! And let’s experiment with liquid density by making a rainbow lemonade. We’ll be making cocoa spoons and find out how quickly or slowly things dissolve. And finally, our pancake taco teaches students about how some foods stretch. Learn about maple syrup molecules while making maple oat cookies.
Age Differentiated Classes
Class is offered for ages 6-8, 9-11 and 12+. While we will basically be learning the same lessons, we’ll definitely be taking our science to deeper depths for each age group. Our youngest learners will be mixing, observing, and either writing out their ideas on their science worksheets or circling new words about what they expect to happen on their food science worksheets! There are no reading or writing prereqs for our youngest learners but there are both reading and writing opportunities, making this a perfect first science class! Our older kids will take on more responsibility for chopping and dicing, learning knife safety and cutting techniques, running additional experiments, reading ingredient lists and scientific articles and writing more elaborate scientific method lab sheets. But, they will all eat ice cream!