Hello families,

We're halfway through the summer and have explored so much magic!

This week, the children participated in Fairy Tale Bingo, and went on an Elf Scavenger Hunt! My friend, Missy the Elf came by to visit us this week and put together a fun scavenger hunt around the school for all the groups. The children all expressed excitement as they took off in search of Missy the Elf. While on the hunt, Missy the Elf sneaked around observing how well the groups did figuring out the clues and working together to find her!

At the end of the scavenger hunt, Missy had to run off before the children finished the scavenger hunt. Before she left, she made sure to leave a magical surprise for them and a message!

Of course, a lot of the children were unhappy to not have seen missy at the end of the hunt, however, they were happy to know Missy the Elf will be making an appearance during the Hollywood Show!

I must say, Missy's appearance during the show was worth all the wait!

For this week’s theme of “Is it Magic?”, students felt inspired to create vibrant art.

In our first project, influenced by the drip art of contemporary artist Jen Stark, students created their own hypnotic drip art for our first project of the week! For our second project, students were shown a demonstration of finger painting and were instructed to create a finger paint pineapple project. As for our final project, students were taught about Roy Lichtenstein and his pop art. After becoming inspired by his work, students were instructed to create their own colorful pop art!

As a backup project, some students were shown a sunset collage created by the teacher, were provided mixed materials and were given the freedom to create their own unique collage.

Hi Everyone! For week three of Just Do It, we honed our magical powers and put them to good use. We’ve been putting lots of our never-ending energy into dancing and jumping to the fun music!

Our older friends got to participate in a disappearing act, where they wrapped some of their friends in a cloak of toilet paper and made them vanish. When the campers vanished they were not able to ‘see’ the room they were in anymore and their friends had to use words to guide them through an intense obstacle course without losing their whole cloak!

The younger kiddos got surprised with floating balloon heads and had to keep the heads in the air as long as possible without dropping them!

All of our campers got to participate in a magic bean relay race, where teams had to sort through an abundance of cups to find all of the magic beans.

Welcome back to Just Do It for week 3!

We played a great game of wiffleball, where we saw some outstanding home runs off the back wall and noteworthy catches for the out. A valiant game of Knight’s Tourney (4 square) saw campers trying to take down a few very talented staff members. We also invented a new game in just do it this week, dubbed shield ball by a very creative camper. In this take on Scramble, it was every kid for themself as they were limited to 5 steps with the ball before they needed to throw it. Groups used the blue foam blocks as shields that were scattered around the gym, but once they used it once to deflect an enemy ball they had to drop it and run! If they were hit with a ball they were out, but there was a chance for redemption if the player who got you was taken down by another.

We finished the week with a combo of gym games and the famous just do it challenge.

Hi everyone!

It is hard to believe that we are halfway through camp. Week 3 has been a lot of fun in STEAM class. We’ve done a lot of building, science, and engineering this week.

Students learned how to fold a piece of paper to make a paper airplane and why/how the paper flies through the air. They also became engineers and listened to the story “Rosie Revere Engineer” and then they built their own structures out of marshmallows and toothpicks. Lastly, we wrote in invisible ink with lemons.

Students had fun writing secret messages to their friends and teachers!

Week three has been a hot one, but we have made the most of it!

We started out the week by making our own fossils with homemade salt dough. Some students even took it in another direction and created sculptures of food and people out of the dough! After a great beach day on Tuesday, students got to participate in some steam challenges. Working in teams, students made towers out of marshmallows and spaghetti. Teams were also challenged to create the longest paper chain with only one piece of paper.

It was impressive to see kids doing complex problem-solving! And our classroom got some new paper chains to spruce up the space.

I’d say it was a great week for everyone!

This week is the third amazing and magical week in Adventure Summer Camp! For this week’s show, kids will be putting on incredible puppet shows, singing, dancing, and of course, showing off their magical outfit- making skills. This week’s theme is “Is it Magic?” so get ready to see what you think is and isn’t magic.

The kids worked very hard on learning their dances and songs by making sure that every move and harmony was perfect for this week’s show. Not only did the kids work on their dances and songs, but they also worked really hard to make sure that their outfits were fashion forward and ready for the runway!

Kids also made sure that their puppet friends were ready for tv and made sure that their puppets were kind to one another.

Is it magic? Hollywood is!

We’ve been rehearsing our tricks and illusions; Friday’s show features some of Somerville’s youngest magicians performing stage magic. We had fun creating more fantasy creatures who are making their debut on the catwalk this week. We journeyed deep into the mystical forest to answer the age-old question: what does the fox say? (We still don’t know, but we have fun singing about it!)

What’s cooler than a rock band? A rock band that glows in the dark! We put our heads together and tapped into our imaginations to write an original skit called “Werewolves Don’t Eat Ice Cream”--tune into our show to find out why!

Counselors Corner - East

This week in Counselor's Corner, we have been chatting, creating, and having loads of fun learning about techniques to cope with our big feelings.

Coping with big feelings can be tricky sometimes. We learned ways to identify and handle our emotions. We are learning that it's OK to have feelings - everyone feels happy, sad, angry, or scared sometimes. And we learned to recognize when we are having overwhelming feelings and how to cope with them. Making designs with fuze beads is an example of a technique that we learned in order to calm down. This activity uses fine and gross motor skills and also requires a great deal of concentration. The combination of these elements, which uses intensive mental resources, is a recipe for emotional regulation.

We learned that emotions and experiences can actually help us grow and improve. A growth mindset benefits emotional well-being!

We are having a great time together learning how to manage our feelings. I am excited to continue learning and creating together!

Week 3 in Counselor’s Corner has been great!

As we continue to work on our Growth Mindset, we focused on learning from our mistakes and not seeing them as failures. We learned that mistakes are perfectly normal and that everyone makes them! Detecting our mistakes, correcting them, and then reflecting on how we can learn from them helps us shift from a fixed mindset to a positive growth mindset. Mistakes can serve as clues that we need to shift our thinking and our attitude! To reinforce our lesson, we “flipped that flop” and designed and decorated our own flip-flops. You can reinforce our Detect, Correct, and Reflect strategy at home, too!

All of the children have been active and creative participants and we look forward to continuing all of our mindful growing!