C.V. Starr Elementary Students Enjoy Caine’s Arcade Event
A crowd of third graders lined up outside Frank LaMorte’s fourth grade classroom at C.V. Starr Elementary School in the Brewster School District with empty plastic prize bags, eagerly waiting to be let inside to Caine’s Arcade.
“Students have been working on these games since September,” said LaMorte. “Everything they used was from around the house, stuff you’d recycle like old Amazon boxes. Ok let’s go inside and play some games.”
Hope Charbonneau made a cardboard air hockey game with tin foil pucks; Addison Creary made a ping pong ball toss–every time the ball goes into the hole, you get a candy; Klye Bisla made a mini basketball court and hoop made out of the bottom of a cup; Jade McGowan made Jade’s Xtreme Escape, an escape the room experience with clues and a black light pen, and Ethan Sanchez made a four-hole mini golf course surrounded by cardboard pine trees with a wooden stirring sticks for clubs and a rubber bouncy golf ball.
Caine’s Arcade was inspired by a nine-year-old boy, Caine Monroy, who built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s East LA auto parts shop. After a filmmaker visited the shop, he organized a flash mob of customers to surprise Caine, made a film about him and started a worldwide movement celebrating creativity, play and the power of imagination.
The event is STEAM based but it also integrates 21st century learning skills such as perseverance, communication, collaboration, critical thinking and adaptability to name a few.
Some of the games were elaborate.
Louis Cardea made a replica of Yankee Stadium with a scoreboard, lights and Don Mattingly at first base.
“He’s my favorite player,” Cardea said. “Here’s how you play. It’s like skee ball–you roll the ball up into a slot in the outfield for a home run, into a slot in the infield for either one, two, or three points, or a slot behind home plate for no points. For every point, you win a baseball card.”
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