School’s Out With Fever!

There’s nothing more exciting than the feeling of freedom that hits a child as he or she runs out of the classroom on that last day of school in June. For parents, that excitement might look more like worry and contemplation as they try to figure out what to do with their kids for the long two months ahead. But luckily, the activities and campsin Brooklyn this summer are endless.

To start, Town Square is putting on SummerStarz, a free children’s program offered every Thursday night starting this Thursday, July 8 (and running through August 26) at the East River State Park. This year SummerStarz is offering six scheduled evenings that each start at 6:00 p.m. and include a children’s activity hour, a live performance and a movie. Town Square’s Susan Anderson offers in regards to choosing the live performance acts,“We try and capture a wide range of music from rock and roll to jazz ensembles to community orchestras.” She adds, “Greenpoint and Williamsburg communities are just so lucky because there’s so much going on for people.”

Greenpoint’s YMCA has both preschool (three- to five-year-olds) and day (five- to twelve-year-olds) camps. Camps run in two-week sessions and there are four sessions a summer. The YMCA, who has dynamic themes for each session, selected “Love Peace Planet and Feed the Need to Read!” as one of the themes this year. Day campers choose between swim, art, dance, basketball and soccer camps splitting their time between three to four hours of focused instruction,and standard camp activities such as arts and crafts and specialty field trips.

The Greenpoint Williamsburg Youth Soccer League runs a fantastic two-week summer camp in the second and third week of July. The league brings over college-age coaches (put up by local residents and parents) from the UK for the summer. The GymPark, a gymnastics facility located on Oak Street, has an athletic summer program, as well. This is the first year they’ll be hosting a summer camp though instructor Peter Lattanzio has directed a summer camp for over ten years. The GymPark Summer Camp hosts two age groups: three- to five-year-olds and six-to twelve-year-olds. Camp activities include morning warm-ups, games, yoga, fitness, sports activities and more. There are three full weeks left of summer camp including a whole week just for cheerleading.

While just outside the Greenpoint/Williamsburg borders, there are a few rockin’ (pun intended) camps taking place this summer on the south side of Brooklyn worth knowing about. There is New York City Rock Camp, a week-long camp dedicated to empowering youth through musical collaboration. This camp will be held from July 12-17 at Prospect Heights High School. And then there is the well-known Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, a non-profit music and mentoring program that empowers girls and women through music education and activities. The WMRCFG grew out of the Portland, Oregon-based program Rock ’n’ Roll Camp for Girls, going strong since 2000. The camp, held at the Urban Assembly School of Music & Art in Downtown Brooklynwill have two sessions, July 12-17 and August 23-28; each session will culminate in a live concert comprising of the campers’ newly formed bands.

Instructor, band coach and sound and recording workshop leader Mindy Seegal Abovitz talks about the skill sharing that takes place between instructors, staff and campers, “It’s a lot of sharing of knowledge; and then, of course, passing that knowledge onto an eight-year-old or an eleven-year-old is a really great experience. It’s awesome because a. I didn’t have that when I was a kid—a [female] mentor that played music, and b. you sort of feel like you’re rewriting history, or you can feel the future in the air.”

Other activities to look for this summer arecamps at Ms. J’s Gymnastics and Dance, the Painted Cloud, Spacecraft Brooklyn and the Williamsburg Movement and Arts Center; and the Rock Out for Minty Block party on Saturday, July 10 from 2:00-6:00 p.m. in front of Minty’s house on South Second Street. Minty, for those who don’t know, is a local Brooklyn baby battling brain cancer and this is a celebration of her first birthday.