Hollywood 

Healey:  This summer in Hollywood, our young stars embraced creativity with a focus on sustainability—using recycled materials to design costumes and build props that brought their ideas to life. The children truly rose to the occasion, choreographing incredible routines and crafting imaginative creations. This week’s performances will showcase their hard work and talent through a variety of acts, including a skit inspired by a novel written in 1900, a trending TikTok dance, a show-and-tell interview, and so much more! Make sure you stick around for our final act (hint hint it’s students vs teachers !) As summer winds down, I’m filled with gratitude for the opportunity to be their Hollywood teacher. Your children have been amazing, and I hope you enjoy the show as much as we’ve enjoyed preparing it!

East: We're exploring many ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Our stage has many elements of recycle materials as well as some of our songs! You'll see us reusing the trees from color of nature and the clouds from animal camp. We love reusing in Hollywood. One, it makes it a lot faster to create a stage. Two we don't have that many resources to use so we have to get creative. THREE, we don't want to be wasteful. So please enjoy our Reduce, Reuse, Recycle themed stage and show! 

Healey: What is old is new again with our “Recycle Art and More” theme for week four. In Destination Imagination, we are exploring the freedom of using recycled materials.

The three activities for the week in Destination Imagination are making crazy collage artwork from magazine clipping, making coasters out of white self drying clay adorned with seaglass, pebbles and shells. Our final project of the week is making abstract art using just colored construction paper on colored construction paper. We watched videos made with collages, a video made using seaglass designs and stop action photography, and some video examples of abstract art made with just colored pieces of construction paper.

Students were very enthusiastic about each of these activities, some making political commentary, and others making beautiful patterns and designs. Imagination is the key and the students have it!

Destination Imagination

East: This week, students explored the theme of “Recycle Art and More!” through SO many creative and eco-friendly projects. We kicked things off by making magazine animals using cut-up pieces from old magazines, encouraging students to see beauty in reused materials. 

We continued this busy week with students designing colorful name signs using recycled cardboard and paint, adding their own unique flair. Other groups used coffee filters and watercolor to experiment with texture and blending. One of the highlights of this project was where students used recycled materials and pictures of themselves to create artwork that looked like they were holding up the world.  Finally, the groups created vibrant butterflies using magazine scraps. 

Each project tied into the week’s recycling theme and gave students a new way to think about reusing everyday items. The room was full of color this week! It was a busy, imaginative, and inspiring week that showed just how fun and meaningful recycled art can be! 

STEAM 

Healey: This week the theme was Recycled Art. We started the week making…recycled art! We took inspiration from artists such as Robert Bradford and Jason Mercier to make art out of recycled materials. On Wednesday students engineered water filters, experimenting to find out which materials (cotton balls, cloth, gravel, coffee filters, sponges) or combination of materials could filter the water the best. On Friday students learned about how recycled paper is made. They then made their own recycled paper out of used paper scraps. It was neat to see their creativity throughout the week! 

East: This week in STEAM we have learned about recycling cardboard and used our engineering brains to build amazing lego creations. We listened to a book about the life of a cardboard box and then students got to create their own bookmark from recycled cardstock. They really enjoyed using their creative brains to design their bookmarks. We decided to be engineers on Wednesday and enjoy some relaxing lego building. Students really enjoyed this! Lastly, students used recycled egg cartons to make their own little bug. They came out really cute! 

Healey: Fourth week successfully completed. We can’t believe it! Time is flying by, and it’s hard to believe we’re heading into the final week of camp. This week at the Healey School, students had a great time playing both basketball and soccer. During basketball games, students practiced dribbling, passing, shooting, and even some defensive strategies. They were excited to show off their favorite moves, from quick crossovers to impressive layups, and encouraged each other along the way. Friendly competition was in the air, and it was amazing to see students not only demonstrate their own skills but also learn new techniques from one another. Whether on the court or on the field, the energy was high, the sportsmanship was strong, and every student gave it their all. We’re so proud of everything they’ve accomplished this summer! 

Just Do It

East: Welcome back to the beautiful gymnasium in the East! This week we did a little bit of everything and got to play with the blue blocks and practice our bowling skills. Each group took on the challenge of knocking each other’s bowling pins down by separating into two teams and using dodgeballs to knock all 6 pins down! Everyone got creative with different ways to achieve their goal as a team through communication and teamwork. We then shifted gears and built castles as a team then tried to knock each other’s castles down. It was a fun and energetic week in the Gym, see you in WEEK 5, OLYMPICS WEEK!!! 

LIT's - Healey 

The LITs have been having a fun fourth week of summer camp. After breakfast on Monday, we went upstairs to our classroom where we introduced a few new students, and reviewed our schedule for the day and for the rest of the week. First, we played our fourth massive jeopardy game of the summer. Team Starvin' Marvin, who lost the first two weeks, and then pulled ahead by 1,800 points last week, had a massive victory. They have one the last two weeks, with the game now at a tie 4 weeks in. The two teams will go at it during the final week of camp for our last icebreaker jeopardy game where a victor of the entire summer will be decided! Then, we went outside to take care of the Healey Community Garden which is our community service project this summer. We cleaned up trash, composted plant materials that we found on the walkways, and watered the plants. After that, we headed inside to our pre-lunch free time in the gym with the other groups and then had some lunch. We played a big game of soccer in the gym after that, to prepare for our game versus the staff on Friday this week, and then changed and walked down to the Latta Brothers Memorial Pool at Foss Park where we went swimming for an hour. On Tuesday, we went with the rest of the school on the field trip to Nahant Beach. It was super hot, and the water felt great. A true beach day. On Wednesday, our LIT field trip day, we left the school early around 9:45am and walked down to Gilman Square station where we boarded the green line for Science Park. We walked to the Museum of Science where we had a fun afternoon seeing Space: A New Frontier in the Omni Theatre, One Sky in the Planetarium, and then explored all the wonderful exhibits that place has to offer. After the show, the students voted to stay there until we had to go back to the school instead of hitting the pool for a bit, since we had just had a beach day. We look forward to our trip to Canobie Lake Park on Thursday, and Friday where we will check in on the community garden, practice a little soccer for the LIT Games later at noon, and then have lunch and then cool off at the pool for a little bit before returning to school for the camp show. 

Healey: Happy 4th week of Summer Adventures which happens to occur during Universal Friendship Week!

Since these weeks coincide, Counselor’s Corner focused on the universal value of friends and the unique ways we honor these special relationships. We learned that various symbols and traditions have emerged to represent and celebrate friendship throughout the world. For example, in Ireland, the Claddagh Ring represents friendship, love, and loyalty. Kokeshi dolls are given as gifts in Japan to signify friendship and appreciation. And,  in China, Pan Chang knots symbolize the strong ties and connections between friends. We also learned that food across cultures is a powerful way to connect with others and celebrate friendship. Particularly, the pineapple is known as the friendship fruit and represents hospitality, sharing, and caring. This symbol can be seen welcoming visitors at many hotels and tourist destinations around the world!

Your kiddos loved learning that, no matter where they are, the world is rich in symbols, customs, and traditions that convey the essence of friendship. For our own symbol, we made kindness rocks that they could keep and place in their community to show the importance of lasting friendship and how easy it is to show and give to others. 

It is wonderful sharing our own friendship journey together and hope you all have a very pleasant universal friendship week!

Counselor's Corner