Field Trips

With a sporty race car in mind, 10-year-old Miguel Quechol moved his index finger across the laptop's touchpad to draw a red rectangle on the screen. He added a roof, headlights and tires. His creation seemed ready to roar to life when he painted on the final touch, a swath of exhaust fumes spewing from the car's tailpipe. "I have a computer at home, but I usually download music," said Miguel, a sixth-grader at Lansdowne Middle School Center for Career and Professional Studies. "I want to find a program like this at home to play."

Kindergartner Madi Costigan stood on her tiptoes at the desk of the Miller Branch library, reaching up to hand the librarian a picture book and her library card. Regular patrons waited in line while Madi and her Worthington Elementary kindergarten class checked out books, many of the children doing so for the first time. The students were visiting Miller as part of a partnership between the Howard County Library and public school kindergartens. The field trips draw children and their families to the library, but also teach students map reading and literacy skills.

T he Woodlawn High students were divided into three groups stationed at chalkboards, writing out questions. • What year was the microscope created? • What do you view microorganisms on? • And finally: Describe the similarities of prokaryotes and eukaryotes. "That is an excellent question," said James Martin, drawing the attention of the 25 students in his class. The teens - all black male freshmen - were giving one another "critical thinking" problems in various subjects as part of a semiweekly, in-class tutorial.

BELATED 100th birthday wishes to Marian Lefevre, formerly from the area, who celebrated her centennial Sept. 14. Lefevre arrived at Ellis Island 80 years ago, a wide-eyed farm woman from a little village outside Prague, not knowing a word of English, said Jeanette Anderson of Pasadena, one of her two daughters. She didn't have a skill but knew how to work. And work she did -- at a variety of jobs that would keep her employed well into her 80s. She's been a waitress; worked and traveled with carnivals during the Depression; built a log cabin home in Florida with her husband, Charles Lefevre; worked as a seamstress at Mano Swartz Furriers; and, in her last career, ran a boarding house.

Auditions The Fabulous 50+ Players will be performing an outreach program based on their show, "Fab 50s do the '50s," at the various senior centers in Howard County between October and December. Auditions will be at 7 p.m. Sept. 28 and Oct. 5 at the Howard County Center for the Arts, 8510 High Ridge Road, Ellicott City. Information: 410-313-2787. Tutors needed A-OK (Assist Our Kids) Mentoring-Tutoring Inc. seeks adult volunteers to work in Howard County Public Schools and in after-school programs.