Join us one Saturday each month, as we turn our writing center into a mad scientist’s laboratory to perform totally messy, thrilling, and crazy experiments guaranteed to make your mom glad you’re not doing them at her house! In past sessions, we’ve made monster ice cream, held balloon races, turned milk into curds and whey, and made plastic gloves come to life. What crazy experiments will we attempt this month? Join us and find out!

Register Now

Join us one Saturday each month, as we turn our writing center into a mad scientist’s laboratory to perform totally messy, thrilling, and crazy experiments guaranteed to make your mom glad you’re not doing them at her house! In past sessions, we’ve made monster ice cream, held balloon races, turned milk into curds and whey, and made plastic gloves come to life. What crazy experiments will we attempt this month? Join us and find out!

Register Now

Join us one Saturday each month, as we turn our writing center into a mad scientist’s laboratory to perform totally messy, thrilling, and crazy experiments guaranteed to make your mom glad you’re not doing them at her house! In past sessions, we’ve made monster ice cream, held balloon races, turned milk into curds and whey, and made plastic gloves come to life. What crazy experiments will we attempt this month? Join us and find out!

Register Now

Your Words. Your Photos. Your Film. Your Voice.

You have something important to say. Whether it’s about your school, your family, your neighborhood, or your identity, you have a story that other people should hear. With our help, learn how to share your story in a dynamic way!

During this free six-week workshop, you will create a 3–5 minute Digital Story—a short, first-person video narrative created by combining recorded voice, still and moving images, and music or other sounds. We’ll supply tokens for public transportation, provide video and still cameras to capture your observations, and help you use multimedia software to bring your vision to life. All you need to bring is you—your thoughts, your personality, and your creativity!

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Dr. Spells is not only our mysterious founder, he’s also a big-time Hollywood producer. After the success of our first short film, “Super Horse,” he’s ready to commission a new movie from his favorite screenwriters, the students of Spells. Join us for this crash course in filmmaking from green light to popcorn, as we brainstorm ideas, write a screenplay, shoot the movie, and premiere it—all in one week!

Registration is free, but requires a refundable deposit of $25 via credit card, PayPal, check, or cash. The registration will not be valid until the deposit has been received by Spells Writing Lab.

For one week only this summer, Spells is transforming its lab into a recipe test kitchen, and you’re the chef! We’ll learn how a cookbook author comes up with recipe ideas, cook and sample our dishes, and write our recipes so readers can recreate our meals at home. By the end of the week, we’ll have a cookbook full of rockin’ recipes for no-cook snacks, healthy smoothies, and simple entrees for the whole family to enjoy!

Registration is free, but requires a refundable deposit of $25 via credit card, PayPal, check, or cash. The registration will not be valid until the deposit has been received by Spells Writing Lab.

You’ve been recruited to go undercover with Spells Writing Lab for this special one-week Spy School. After an intensive week of training by our operatives, you’ll have the skills you need to become a secret agent. Create your cover story, gather some pocket litter, and become a master of disguise. Learn the art of cryptography so you can send and decipher encoded messages. Then write fictionalized accounts of your most mysterious adventures. Do you have what it takes to be a master spy?

Registration is free, but requires a refundable deposit of $25 via credit card, PayPal, check, or cash. The registration will not be valid until the deposit has been received by Spells Writing Lab.

Are you quick with a quip? Always cracking jokes? Fooling around and making people laugh? Then you might have what it takes to be a stand-up comedian. During this week of side-splitting laughs, we’ll try our hands at writing different types of rib-ticklers, from knock-knock jokes to riddles to funny stories. We’ll also work on our delivery to make our jokes extra hilarious, and tell them on stage at the end of the week. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the Spells Comedy Academy!

Registration is free, but requires a refundable deposit of $25 via credit card, PayPal, check, or cash. The registration will not be valid until the deposit has been received by Spells Writing Lab.

Our mysterious founder, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Spells, is a writer, publisher, inventor—and avid adventurer! Join us for this exciting week, as we recreate some of his wildest exploits and find creative solutions for escaping certain death or dismemberment. The Spells Adventurers will be traveling the globe (in our minds) to complete team challenges, craft amazing inventions with simple stuff, and transcribe the stories of our founder’s fantastic feats for future generations.

Registration is free, but requires a refundable deposit of $25 via credit card, PayPal, check, or cash. The registration will not be valid until the deposit has been received by Spells Writing Lab.

You love music (we know you do) but have you ever tried writing your own song? Have you dreamed of standing on a massive stage in the limelight and singing to the world? Well we have a stage, some light, and possibly even some limes, and we can teach you some of the tools you’ll need to write a song of your very own. Throughout the week, you’ll work with professional singer/songwriters, learn about rhymes, beats, and melodies, and perform your Grammy-worthy hit on stage at the end of camp!

Registration is free, but requires a refundable deposit of $25 via credit card, PayPal, check, or cash. The registration will not be valid until the deposit has been received by Spells Writing Lab.

Poetry is everywhere, from pop, to hip-hop, to rap, to spoken word. People use it to express themselves or to send a message. This two-day workshop will help you get your feet wet in the awesome world of poetry. You’ll learn about rhymes, rhythms, beats, and forms, and by the end of the workshop, you will have your very own poem in a brand new Spells anthology book.

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Join us one Saturday each month, as we turn our writing center into a mad scientist’s laboratory to perform totally messy, thrilling, and crazy experiments guaranteed to make your mom glad you’re not doing them at her house! In past sessions, we’ve made monster ice cream, held balloon races, turned milk into curds and whey, and made plastic gloves come to life. What crazy experiments will we attempt this month? Join us and find out!

Register Now

Sometimes the art in storybooks interests us more than the story! Learn to create stories and tales completely out of pictures. Join us and retell your favorite fairytales with your own drawings, or create a story all your own and take it home to share with family and friends. This workshop focuses on communication and expression through art.

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Sticking close to home for Spring Break this year? Get a tantalizing taste of our summer programming with this special one-week day camp at Spells Writing Lab that’s perfect for animal lovers.

Each morning we’ll transform into Animal Explorers, seeking out local fauna in the green spaces around Spells, writing shaped poetry and animal tales, and discovering our own imaginary creatures while on safari. With special animal guests and plenty of critter creativity, this camp is sure to delight!

Note: all students will be required to have an animal waiver signed by a parent or guardian before participating in this workshop.

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*This camp week has a minimum enrollment of 10 students. If the minimum enrollment is not reached by April 12, the Spring Break camp will be canceled.

Join us one Saturday each month, as we turn our writing center into a mad scientist’s laboratory to perform totally messy, thrilling, and crazy experiments guaranteed to make your mom glad you’re not doing them at her house! In past sessions, we’ve made monster ice cream, held balloon races, turned milk into curds and whey, and made plastic gloves come to life. What crazy experiments will we attempt this month? Join us and find out!

Register Now

Do you want to be an ace reporter? Come to this workshop to learn how to interview and profile a pal! Brainstorm interesting questions, practice your interviewing techniques, and write a feature story about another student. You’ll go home with your very own profile that someone has written about you!

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Do you like comic books and graphic novels? Then join us at Spells for a Mad Libs-style graphic novel workshop! Learn plot pacing, dialogue, and illustration techniques while working on your writing skills and having a blast. We will be using a fun and inventive template as a springboard to writing and illustrating our own short graphic novel, and the results are bound to be wacky!

Do you love your neighborhood? What’s your favorite place, building, park, or person where you live? Is there something unique about your home? We believe there’s something special about all the communities that make up Philadelphia. No matter what the size or location, we all feel a sense of pride and love for our neighborhood.

Spells Writing Lab is partnering with AIGA Philadelphia to celebrate the special neighborhoods of our city. AIGA Philadelphia is a local organization comprised of creatives such as graphic designers, illustrators, educators, etc. Under the guidance of graphic design college students from around the city, kids will create a collage and supporting poem expressing their love for their home. Emphasis will be placed on successfully expressing ideas through the integration of image and the written word.

Held at Moore College of Art & Design, participants will have the opportunity to see how professionally trained creatives work. After the workshop, with the help of computers and scanners, graphic design students will work together to design a larger project that features all the pieces created in this workshop.

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Join us one Saturday each month, as we turn our writing center into a mad scientist’s laboratory to perform totally messy, thrilling, and crazy experiments guaranteed to make your mom glad you’re not doing them at her house! In past sessions, we’ve made monster ice cream, used a magnet to pull the iron out of cereal, turned milk into curds and whey, and made gloves come to life. What crazy experiments will we attempt this month? Join us and find out!

Register Now

Have you ever thought about what crazy things could happen if you gave an animal a treat? The answer might be more than a little surprising! In this writing workshop based on Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond’s popular If You Give A Mouse A Cookie series, we will explore how small actions can lead to zany consequences, and how an everyday situation can turn disastrous—or hilarious! Taking place at the Gallery at Market East, this is a perfect opportunity for parents to get some holiday shopping done without the kids. And, as a special treat after the workshop, participants are invited to help paint the “How Philly Moves” mural, which is being installed next spring on the exterior of the airport.

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Spells Writing Lab is transforming from a laboratory into a travel agency . . . with tickets to your favorite fictional places! Bring along a favorite book (or think of a movie) with an exciting setting and create your very own travel guide for that location. We’ll help you brainstorm where to stay, restaurants for dining, and the can’t-miss sights everyone should see at this imaginary destination. In the end we will compile the Ultimate Travel Guide to Imaginary Places with all of the locales.

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Are you trying to avoid taking a test at school?  Trying to find a reason to get out of gym class? Forget to finish your homework, but you’ve already used “My dog ate it”? Taking inspiration from the book Dear Teacher by Amy Husband, we’ll imagine incredibly convincing explanations and craft extraordinary excuse notes that are way more creative than your average doctor’s note. We can’t guarantee that these adventurous accounts will result in an excused absence, but we’re sure your teacher will have fun reading them!

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You’ve probably written stories about your pets. But have you ever written stories FOR them? In this wild workshop, we’ll brainstorm what kinds of stories our furred, feathered, and scaly friends would enjoy listening to and create them! For example, we have it on good authority that dogs love tales about treats, chasing things, and bravely scaring off dastardly intruders like the recycling bin. What does YOUR pet want to read about?

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Join Spells Writing Lab for a writing activity that involves the whole family!  After touring the First Person Museum at the Painted Bride, a ”museum of the people” to exhibit the meaningful stories behind the objects we treasure in our lives, your family will have the opportunity to tell your own stories about your meaningful objects.  Please bring an object (or photograph) that has a particularly special meaning for your family and participate in our own Show and Tell and Write activity.  You will leave the workshop with a collaborative piece of writing that will make the whole family proud!

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Whether you already have started a draft or you’re just beginning the process, join Spells Writing Lab and current college students from Ursinus College for a two-week session that will set you on the right track. The workshop will provide you with general preparation for the college application writing process and allow you to work in small groups and one-on-one with current college students who will help you with your writing!  Class limited to 10 students.

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Just because there are a lot of words doesn’t mean it’s good—a story, that is. Learn the basic ingredients for a story and then tell one in as few words as possible. Can you give us the beginning, middle, and end in 10 words or less? 5 words?! Use your imagination and your wizardry with words to create super-short stories. Prizes will be awarded to the storytellers who can compose the shortest story possible.

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A picture is worth a thousand works. For famed photographer Gordon Parks, whether it’s a photograph of a worker holding a mop, or of famed boxer Muhammad Ali sweating during a workout, his images told memorable tales. Narrative journalism should also paint a vivid image. What does rain sound like? What does your mom’s kitchen smell like? What color is the neighbor’s cat? Details take the reader on a ride, and make for good stories. We will use some of Park’s most famous photos for inspiration, take our own photos and write short features based on what we captured.
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Whether you already have started a draft or you’re just beginning the process, join Spells Writing Lab and current college students from Ursinus College for a two-week session that will set you on the right track. The workshop will provide you with general preparation for the college application writing process and allow you to work in small groups and one-on-one with current college students who will help you with your writing!  Class limited to 10 students.

Register Now

They can be scary, ugly, funny, and gross. But do you really know what it’s like to be a monster? It’s not easy. Explore what life is like for your favorite creature. Use your imagination to create a whole life for your monster that didn’t exist before. Does he have monster friends? What does a monster do when she’s not scaring people? Write the untold story of monsters and maybe even help them change their monster ways.

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Join us one Saturday each month, as we turn our writing lab into a mad science lab to perform totally messy, thrilling, and crazy experiments guaranteed to make your mom glad you’re not doing them at her house. We’ll even do a little writing, since even mad scientists need to keep track of what they’re doing and whether their efforts were successful.
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When your parents tell you to eat your veggies because they’re good for you, are they telling the truth? Is calcium the real reason you should drink lots of milk? And what would REALLY happen if you didn’t brush your hair? Have you ever suspected that grown-ups are part of a vast consipiracy in which they tell you fake reasons for following the rules because they don’t think kids can handle the truth? If so, come to this top-secret workshop, where we’ll uncover the real stories behind the lies our parents tell us. But shhhhhh… don’t let them know we’re spilling the beans, or they’ll try to stop u………………………………

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Mary DeWitt’s Pardon Me is a retrospective exhibition of over 20-years of portraits of woman sentenced to life without parole in Pennsylvania. DeWitt has returned to this portrait series throughout the years using various formats for her work: tile murals, large canvasses, reverse glass paintings, and most recently a video of her reverse glass portraits painting process with narrative and the women’s voices. DeWitt’s paintings are powerfully expressive images of incarcerated women who gaze directly at the viewer. She intends for us to consider the person first – apart from her circumstances – and to bring visibility to each woman’s life.

After touring the exhibition, we’ll brainstorm what it would be like to arrive back into society after many years away—whether after traveling to space, living in an isolated community, or hiding out underground. On Demand TV, the power of the internet, iPhones and Kindles—what would YOU make of all these innovations? We’ll explore these questions and imagine what we might find 20 years from now if we suddenly arrived on the planet.

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Join local writing teacher Kate Rettaliata for a four-week course that will walk you through each step of the college essay writing process. Using creative, interesting activities aimed at unleashing your personal story, you will learn more about yourself and how to best present yourself in your essay. The workshop will include individual meeting time with Kate and other volunteers who will give one-on-one feedback on your writing each week. Class limited to 12 students.

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Do you rush out to watch the movie versions of your favorite books on opening weekend? Does it drive you crazy when the film adaptation changes the ending, or adds scenes that weren’t in the original? Do you think you could cast better actors to portray your favorite fictional characters? In this unique series, we will be featuring a popular teen book or graphic novel for two months. Read the novel, then share your impressions of the author’s work and watch the film that has brought the page to life. During our group sessions, we’ll also use the book and film as a jumping off point for our own writing projects. Did the filmmakers do a good job of translating the written word to the screen? That’s for YOU to decide!

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Whether you already have started a draft or you’re just beginning the process, join Spells Writing Lab and current college students from Ursinus College for a two-week session that will set you on the right track. The workshop will provide you with general preparation for the college application writing process and allow you to work in small groups and one-on-one with current college students who will help you with your writing!  Class limited to 10 students.

Register Now

Sports reporting goes beyond just writing the final score of the game—you’re describing the details, atmosphere, and stories of the event for those who were not there or did not watch it. We’ll exercise your observation skills with a video of a sports contest during a class session, then write an article about a certain part of the game.
During our Saturday session, we’ll attend a Temple football game and take notes and pictures, then write articles for the Spells Sports Report magazine at the following Wednesday night session. If you enjoy sports or are interested in journalism, this workshop is your chance to learn all about the art of sports reporting!