The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Camp alternatives offer array of options
When it comes to summer camp options around Northeast Ohio, area parents have options far beyond the traditional, outdoors-based summer camp.
Take, for example, the various summer camps based around arts, educational and science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, that have proliferated over the last two decades.
Northeast Ohio Parent Magazine Editor Angela Gartner affirmed the proliferation of summer-camp specialties around Northeast Ohio these days.
“There are many options for summer camps in the region,” she said. “Many camps are providing kids with the opportunity to get involved with music, dance, theater, build with LEGOS, work with technology or try new sports.”
There are so many summer-camp options, in fact, that Northeast Ohio Parent organized a camp fair, which was held in January at Hawken School’s Lyndhurst campus, at which 45 youth summer camps presented exhibits.
They represented niches ranging from traditional, outdoor-based day and resident camps and sports-related venues to arts, dance, educational and music camps, among other options.
One presenter there was Beachwood-based Thrive Arts Center. Co-owner Cathy Huser said that children ranging in age from 18 months into their teens can partake in one or more of a variety of art, dance and music classes in a relaxed atmosphere that’s creatively nourishing and nurturing.
“Our goal is that, (because) every child has lots of imaginative and creative skills inside of them, we want to pull that out,” she said, adding that more and more parents today are recognizing the interests and talents unique to each and every child. “So I think it’s important to help your child discover their unique self and I think parents realize certain areas where their children feel more comfortable and creative than others.”
Some examples of summer-camp offerings at Thrive Arts Center include weeklong dance camps, a ukulele camp, a princess camp and a superhero camp.
During the superhero camp, participants work with the facility’s certified instructors to develop their own stories and create a fiveday experience around it.
“It’s a one-week camp that’s three hours per day. And our little superheroes get one hour of music, one hour of dance and music and one hour of art,” Huser said. “There is a storyline they follow throughout the week. They discover their superpowers. Something happens and they have to save the day.”
She said it’s a unique program, in that it draws out the children’s creative instincts and turns them into handson, confidence- and socialskills-building activity.
“The children are very actively involved in the creative process of developing the story throughout the week,” she said. “Rather than being taught-to, they’re being pulled-from. In this way, we’re encouraging their creative expression to blossom.”
Another area summercamp alternative is offered through Lakeland Community College and its College for Kids program.
Camp Director Nannette Mayer, who has been running the 30-year-old program for the last 25 years, said the summer camp fills a unique niche in its participants’ lives over the summer.
“I think the educational part of it is what makes us different than some of the others,” she said during a June 15 interview at Lakeland’s main campus in Kirtland. “It’s not that those don’t have an educational component. But ours is more focused on that component. And it’s a different setting, obviously because of the property we’re on.”
She said from the camp’s administrators, all of whom are either certified teachers or are going to school to become teachers, to the programming, itself, the College for Kids camp at Lakeland serves not only as a summer camp experience for its attendees. It’s also a useful “bridge” for students coming out of one grade and about to enter the next.
“Some parents look at it as kind of a bridge to the next school year. And some look at it as a kind of tutorial for kids who might be struggling in school.” Mayer said, adding that participants get healthy doses of science, outdoor education, reading, art, American Sign Language, social studies, computer technology, physical education and a component known as lenders and leaders, which is kind of a service-oriented, community-minded piece of the program.
She said the ultimate goal of Lakeland’s College for Kids is to introduce children as young as five to a college campus in hopes that they’ll feel comfortable there from early on. The hope is that they’ll feel natural and confident making a decision to attend college some day, she said.
The other aim is that they simply learn a thing or two, she added.
“The goal is that the kids walk away having learned something, but don’t necessarily know it. They learn by doing,” she said. “It’s a nonthreatening learning environment. They work with their peers and through doing lots of activities. It’s casual. They don’t have to take a test. They don’t have homework. They don’t fill out worksheets and they don’t make a grade at the end of it to show that they passed.”
Another hands-on, intensely project-centered summer camp option is manifested in First Tech Challenge — an international, STEM-based program through which participants in grades 4-8 collaborate on various age-designated projects including LEGOS.
Andrea Martin-Clay, who is a substitute teacher in the Solon Schools, is the director of and teacher in the Mayfield Heights-based FTC team — No. 9197, also known as The Catalysts.
She said the group developed out of a desire to promote STEM education in the area.
Martin-Clay explained there are various groups within the FTC, including First Tech Challenge, itself, First Robotics Challenge, First LEGO League and First LEGO League Jr.
She and a number of her robotics challenge team members were at the Kirtland Kiwanis Strawberry
Festival showing off some of their creations, including 18-by-18-inch robots participants in the Neobots segment of FTC build and program to perform certain prescribed challenges.
She said that, for each year’s FTC program, participants are given a theme and work together to complete projects relative to it.
“This year’s challenge has to do with space, so the kids will be working with rockets and other space-themed projects,” she said, adding that some of last year’s projects included building a chair out of newspaper and masking tape that would support the weight of a student, along with a plasticstraw bridge capable of supporting a box of crayons.
“It’s a great experience for the kids because they learn by doing hands-on stuff. They learn teamwork, how to start researching for a project, coming up with a solution and how to program a robot,” she said.
She said the FTC program, which is held in the Mayfield City Schools’ Innovation Center, is in its third year and has produced many happy graduates.
“We’ve gotten some great feedback,” Martin-Clay said, adding that the kids’ last day is especially exciting for them. “On the last day, the kids can come in and show their parents what they made, how to program the robots, the chair they made out of newspapers and they’re really proud of it all.”
“Rather than being taught-to, they’re being pulledfrom. In this way, we’re encouraging their creative expression to blossom.” — Thrive Arts Center. Co-owner Cathy Huser