The Epping Recreation Department’s K-8 summer day-camp will begin on July 5th. This year’s program will serve 75 children each week. The program will be open for ten hours each day, and will include field trips, sports, games, and enrichment activities.
As in previous years, we will coordinate with the school’s schedule to encourage attendance at summer school; parents can drop their children off at the school in the morning, and our staff will escort them directly to camp after class. For children enrolled in summer school, class attendance is a mandatory prerequisite for participation in camp each day. In the past, this incentive has helped to boost summer school participation.
Each camp day includes a variety of fun activities designed to build social skills, self-confidence, creativity, and physical fitness. Campers are assigned to groups according to their age (10-15 children per group). A Senior Counselor leads each group through the scheduled camp activities, with Junior Counselors assisting where necessary. During special enrichment activities, such as our daily art, cooking, yoga and woodworking classes, we have extra staff on hand to offer more personal guidance and support to participants. Our AmeriCorps volunteers also lead the campers in periodic, age-appropriate service learning projects that help to connect campers with their community.
This year we will be adding several exciting new activities to our summer programs. Our new Recreation Revolving Fund has allowed us to purchase a fifteen-passenger bus that will facilitate small group field trips for our middle-schoolers. We will also coordinate with PlusTimeNH to bring three additional AmeriCorps members to the program who will offer leadership, nutrition and technology enrichment blocks. Our middle-school group will also offer a community bike repair shop which is funded through a Youth Venture grant. We will also purchase used instruments for a rock band program to be led by a local music teacher.
Each group will also spend at least an hour per week at the town library taking part in the town-funded summer reading program, where they will participate in reading activities and games. They will also have the opportunity to check books out of the library and keep a log of the time they spend reading over the course of the summer.
Space is limited at the Epping Recreation Summer Camp!
At camp we have fun with arts and crafts, sports activities, fishing and nature walks. For the middle school program we have bike trips twice a week to local destinations! Come join your friends and have lots of fun at the Epping Recreaiton Summer program!
