Please visit the Summer 2009 issue of Hip, Hip, Hooray Magazine. In this first issue of the new 2008-9 school year we describe an approach to arts/crafts time that will save you from having to come up with craft ideas. This approach will also get your kids passionate about making things, it will encourage them to be self-starters and to do arts and crafts at home, on their own time. The approach will foster creativity, encourage kid cooperation, support their capacity of "losing" themselves in projects ... check it out.

Hip, Hip, Hooray is an online magazine written by members of The First Presbyterian Church of Ardmore, Pennsylvania. This e-magazine is FREE. It includes fun worksheets, academic enrichment materials, activities and ideas to help with the various segments of an after school program schedule. The activities are designed for elementary school students K – 5.

Look at the menu bar on the left for an outline of the categories of materials available. All the activities are available for you to download (pdf files).

Hip, Hip, Hooray is Relational:

Many Hip, Hip, Hooray activities can be done by the student independently, however, we recommend – whenever possible – that a tutor and a student enjoy these activities together, interactively. Learning is deeper, more meaningful and "funner" when it happens side by side with a favorite adult

Learning is discovering, exploring, and developing skills through others, with others, for others. We want to create materials that engage the student and the after school tutor in fun and learning together. One of the joys of learning is the personal connections that are made between the teaching-adult and the learning-child.

Hip, Hip, Hooray is Educational and Fun:

We create these materials around the understanding that play is the way all children process their experiences, explore the world and relate to others. Play is the way children develop their minds and their hearts. We are also concerned with making materials that kids can do successfully. Children begin to recognize and enjoy their own capacities for learning and for creativity when they encounter materials that resonate with their own sense of fun, and materials that set them up for success rather than failure.

While our belief in God's love for all people sparks everything we create on this site, the activities offered here are academic, not religious.