Daycamp splatter wk6

2013 JCC Day Camp Splatter July 12, 2013 / 5 Av 5773 Vol. 7 - Issue 6

Girls Got Game Due to the popularity of our female sports programs, we have expanded our Girls Got Game camp offerings this summer. A few summers ago we offered only one week of “all girls sports” programs. This summer, we offered five weeks of sports camps exclusively for girls! We have completed two successful weeks of the program at the Staenberg Family Complex, where the girls competed in field hockey, lacrosse, basketball, soccer, softball and volleyball. The camps also focus on healthy living and incorporate fitness courses taught by professional fitness instructors. We are offering three full weeks of “Girls Got Game” camp at the Marilyn Fox Building in Chesterfield, July 15, 22 and 29, and a few spots still remain!

The line-up includes Multi-sports week, Field Hockey week, and, finally, Soccer Performance week. All the participants take part in a fitness class each day of the week, from Yoga, Pilates, Bosu Hoola Hoops, Dance and Aerobics classes. It is a great way to exercise, get fit and burn off some energy throughout the day. Campers also spend an hour each day relaxing and swimming at the outdoor pool. The girls really enjoy playing sports with other girls and learning from athletic female counselors. If your sports-minded girl is interested in participating in this growing program, contact Sara Jones at sjones@jccstl.org or Chris Horan at choran@jccstl.org

In addition to our girls’ sports and traditional camp programs, we still have four amazing weeks of camp remaining, including NFL Flag Football Camp, Kelvin Lee Basketball Camp and four full weeks of Camp of the Arts all taking place at the Marilyn Fox Building. At SFC, some spaces remain in most of our traditional camps. Milton Frank Camp of the Arts is offering Open Curtain Camp, Puppetry and Playwriting and, finally, Circus camp! We would love to see your campers and their friends.

Reminder: Please send a box or two of macaroni and cheese or canned vegetables or fruit to help replenish the shelves of the Harvey Kornblum Jewish Food Pantry during our annual Tiyul for Hunger. We will reward the group that brings in the most food with a cookie cake party! Bring in ten food items to earn the chance to “pie” your counselor.

Happy Camping, Joey Boime, Director J Day Camps

Discover the Spirit

Camp Kehillah

Camp Kehillah

Hyman Multin Sports Track

Gymnastics, Cheer, & Dance Track

In addition to the sports activities the campers play with their counselors, each group also has a few periods a week that center on the “Sport Focus” of the week. Sports coordinator Kyle Harrigan will provides campers with sportspecific skill instruction followed by games.

We first implemented Handball at the JCC during the 2012 London Summer Olympics. The game, which combines aspects of basketball and soccer, is hugely popular in Europe, with the gold medals won by France (men) and Norway (women) respectively. However, the USA Handball team has not qualified for the Olympics since 1996, thus it became our sport focus for the week – to reintroduce handball to camp as a sport focus and work on fundamentals.

Handball is played on a court roughly the size of a basketball court, with goals at either end. Teams attempt to score by throwing the ball into the other team’s goal. The game emphasizes passing and moving, as players are only allowed three steps before they must either pass or shoot the ball. Our drills worked on these elements, as campers practiced catching and throwing a ball while on the move, as well as shooting on net using the common jump throwing technique often used by the pros. The games that followed the drills were filled with fun and intensity as campers enjoyed the new, fast-paced, team-oriented game.

The Sports camp award winners from the previous week were Sam M. from group #1 and counselor Eric L. from group #5.

Congratulations to both!

This week the campers united to interact with food, song and dance of Israel, while learning about Jewish culture.

The campers showed off their Wacky Wednesday spirit through the theme “Purim in July” and the finest costumes were awarded at Flagpole. Later in the day, the campers tie-dyed white t-shirts and cooled off from the summer heat by playing numerous water activities.

A colorful rhythmic gymnastics routine using ribbon rounded out our exciting and fun week of camp!

Camp Kehillah

Milton Frank Camp of the Arts Camp of the Arts got to clown around for five days straight during Circus week! Professional circus trainers from the City Museum’s Circus Harmony taught them juggling, plate spinning and mat acrobatics. They created colorful circus train cars from shoe boxes. They even wrote their own circus to perform for Shabbat on Friday. This involved assigning different roles and groups, much like a putting on a play.

They played animals, clowns, ring masters and acrobats, and made their own costumes and props for their circus. Circus Harmony also returned on Friday for a special performance for all of camp!

New to J Day Camps this week was the J Players for 6th-9th graders, led by counselor Brianna LeRose, who teaches English and drama at a local middle school. This small group will meet for the next two weeks for everything theatre! They will then perform monologues, scenes and their very own show in the black box theatre at the Staenberg Family Complex on July 19. This week, they learned improvisation skills and applied them to a number of games

(think, Who’s Line is it Anyway?). They worked on monologues for auditions and learned Shakespeare’s famous “All the World’s a Stage...” They even got the chance to teach the younger groups drama games.

SFC Camp of the Arts took a trip around the globe for Around the World in a Week! On Monday, campers made passports with pictures and pages for each country. First stop was Japan for a day full of Eastern art. Campers made fans with beads and 3D sushi art. They interpretive danced to Japanese folk music and learned phrases in Japanese. On Tuesday, they explored Kenya! Campers made African tribal necklaces and listened to Broadway’s The Lion King. On Wednesday, travelers “visited” Mexico and learned about Day of the Dead and made senorita flowers, skulls and sombreros while listening to mariachi music. They also made blue tie-dye shirts to wear on Friday’s Israel Day. On Thursday, Arts Camp “visited” England, where they listened to Peter Rabbit tales, recited Shakespeare, had a Beatles-Mania dance party and enjoyed tea and biscuits! Friday was Israel Day, and campers learned about the map of Israel, letters, Hebrew and made falafel. They enjoyed splashing and swimming in the pool Monday through Thursday; getting out of the water is always the hardest part. Next week, Camp of the Arts will learn all about acting for Open Curtain Theatre Week!

Camp Nat Koplar This week at camp we have many transitions in the weather – a very humid beginning to the week, rain on Wednesday and then beautiful weather at the end of the week, which made the campers and counselors smile.

This week in Art the campers made rain sticks.

They had a great time gluing different things to the outside of the rain stick to make it personal.

And in Nature with Hillary, the campers made bird feeders. Hillary found an interesting recipe that mixes gelatin and corn syrup, which helps the bird feed form into shapes. The kids had a great time cutting out the shapes with cookie cutters. I hope all the neighborhood birds have a nice feast.

Finally, the swimming pool is a bustling place. I am always so proud every year of our campers in the swimming pool. All of the camp groups started off in the Siwak recreation pool with their lessons. Some children would not even get their heads wet. Now all of the camp groups have moved to the deep pool (5 ft.) and are jumping off the side. Others have moved to the training pool and are swimming like fish. I also have some really brave swimmers who jumped off the starting blocks into the deep water and swam back to the side. What a great swimming program we have at the J Day Camps.

Have a great weekend. Shabbat Shalom!

Camp Kehillah

Sidney R. Baer Track This week, campers had more fun than witches in a broom factory. The pool water felt awesome. We wore an eclectic array of costumes for our Wacky Wednesday ‘Purim in July’ day. Lori in cooking made Oreo cake balls.

In Drama, Cindy’s groups did improvisational movement to various movie songs. For Israeli Alive with Sapir, campers learned about Israel by playing concentration with pictures, i.e., the Great Salt Lake was a match for the Dead Sea. Vadi led soccer games during Sports, and in nature with Chuck, kids enjoyed homegrown cucumbers with onions while they listened

to Jewish music under the shady trees. We learned a catchy new “Hippo” song from Emma in Music, too. During Mitzvah Mania, Magic Mike helped kids discover similar interests among their fellow group mates by filling out questionnaires. Various water activities, shaving cream time and ooblek-making highlighted our busy week. In preparation for Israeli Day, tiedying occurred with Julia in Art, in addition to tissue paper collages. Campers sported many cool tie-dye designs Friday while tasting falafel and hummus on pita, and experiencing Israeli culture through various stations.

Ben Akiba Teen Mitzvah Camp Teen Camp just keeps getting better each week.

The big field trip this week was to Six Flags.

Although we had a damp start on Wednesday, the sun came out and dried up all of the rain!

Better yet, the rain kept the crowds away, meaning that the lines were incredibly short!

Special shout out to Ellie K., our camper of the week and Faye, our counselor of the week.

Maccabi Sports Camp Baseball has always had a love affair with the city of St. Louis or is it the other way around?

Maybe the citizens of St. Louis have always had a love affair with baseball too. Either way it trumps all other activities and events in and around the city we call home.

This week camp was full on baseball; we played many different games that have baseball skills

and dynamics to them – some that have been around for decades some that were invented at the J by former campers and staff!

The campers also worked on skills like relays, pivots and throwing accurately, batting practice, pitching or throwing practice for accuracy, bunting, fielding fly balls and ground balls and base running. It was a nice mix of skill building and competitive contests throughout the weeks.

The highlight of the week was the annual Wifflemania tournament that took place every afternoon. Teams were selected at random and set in a four-team pool of round robin play followed by single elimination championship and third place games. Many of the games were highlighted by walk off homeruns in the bottom half of the last inning. Campers were heroic in winning and more important, in defeat.

It was a magnificent tournament that captured the competitive spirit of baseball camp and allowed the campers to become legends at the J! Next week we move on to NFL Flag Football Camp, our most popular and well represented camp year to year. There is still time to enroll today! We will also featuring our first week of Girls Got Game camp, multi sports and fitness for girls entering 2nd-8th grade.

Camp Essman Gadol

Camp Essman Katan

Nature

We have thoroughly enjoyed camp, Israeli-style, this week. Campers discussed the variety of traditions and culture in Israel. Israeli dodge ball has become a favorite here at camp, and we are so happy our new gag a pit is complete! We spent time in mitzvah mania writing thank you notes to send to our Israel defense Force. We made superb Oreo cake balls in cooking! Israeli music is very uplifting, and we enjoyed making and eating an Israeli salad while listening.

Beautiful challah covers were created in Israel Alive. The campers created unique mosaic initial cards, and Purim mask in arts and crafts.

They look fabulous! To finish off our great week in Israel, we continued our fundraiser “Duct Tape for Oklahoma” tornado victims by taping Brian (one of our counselors) to the fence!

We enjoyed a fun performance by the Circus camp during shabbat, we wrote prayers to send back to Israel with Sapir, and we created a mock Hurshat Tal, water falls in a national park located in the northern district of Israel.

We enjoyed sliding down the water falls. It has been a wonderful week in the land of Israel!

Who can believe that there are only three weeks left of camp? We had a great time this week learning about Israel in TAG. We made pictures to send to the soldiers who protect Israel, and our Rimonim Group even packed their bags, made passports and went on a pretend trip to Israel. We made Israeli Salad in cooking. The water in the pool has been perfect! We all love our swimming time. We spent time on Thursday with Sapir the Shlecha from Israel. We missed her last week! She was on a trip with the Teen Camp. In Nature and Art this week, we learned about rocks. We went on a hunt for the best rocks on the Fox Building Campus and then we made rock sculptures with the rocks we found!

We made four new friends this week at Camp; Emma, Brady, Ximina and Conrad! The theme for next week is Tzaar Baalei Hayim (be kind to animals). We can hardly wait to see what next week brings!!

To connect Israel week with nature, we learned about cucumbers—an important plant in the middle east—and enjoyed a salad made with cucumbers, onions, and seasoned rice vinegar (Kosher, or course!) . Cucumbers are 90% water, and cooling on hot days such as we had early in the week.

Also, Chuck dug through his record collection (old school!) and put some Jewish music on a CD, so campers could enjoy some klezmer music, Yiddish show tunes, Israeli folks songs, and even an Arabic kharja while eating our salads.

Please remember that we will continue to collect canned goods for the Jewish Food Pantry through the end of camp, and we will continue our fundraiser for Oklahoma tornado victims every Friday at 10:30. All donations are appreciated! Shabbat Shalom.

Staenberg Family Complex 2 Millstone Campus Drive St. Louis, MO 63146

Marilyn Fox Building

16801 Baxter Road Chesterfield, MO 63005

314-432-5700 jccstl.org