Tag: kids

One less thing to worry about.

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See this photo? This is not in my morning routine. I applaud parents who take the time and energy to craft these Pinterest worthy bento boxes, but my reality is very different. I am again taking off my Parks & Recreation hat for a second and putting on my parent hat. I know that some of you are quite skilled in the lunch-making arena, but my family mornings reflect more of a Ground Hog Day scenario.

Let me explain. If the concept of Ground Hog Day has you puzzled, let’s take a trip back to 1993. Bill Murray starred in a film – titled Ground Hog Day – about a weatherman who gets caught in a blizzard and finds himself suspended in a time warp where he relives the same day over and over. Do you see where I might be going with this? Fast forward to 2017. I wake my boys up for school and then the reminders begin. Really, it’s only 5 things. Get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth, shoes, LET’S GO! We keep it simple. However, in my home, there is some sort of “kidnesia.” A Ground Hog Day effect. It’s like yesterday and the day before never happened. I get it. I’d rather build LEGO and read too. But, we have to go.

In addition to the reminders, and my husband and I getting ready for work ourselves,  the kids need lunch. Packing lunch may not be a daunting task for all parents, but anything with food involved, whether cooking it or assembling it, is my Achilles heel. The types of lunches my kids will eat cannot be made the night before, they prefer warm Thermos lunches, and my husband and I oblige. What we really need in the morning is a path of least resistance, which brings me to the exciting part, and the reason for my sharing these troubles with you. Thankfully, those in my population have an option. Take the summer off, lunch-makers! Let me introduce you to Camp Kaboom & Camp Whatchamacallit!

Kaboom & Whatchamacallit are Full Day Camps offered at the Community Activities Building and Sandpiper Community Centers, with early start times and the opportunity for Post Care, fun Field Trips, Swimming, Recreational Activities, Special Events, Arts, Crafts, Healthy Snacks, and… wait for it….LUNCH!!!! DAILY! Wake up, get dressed, and KABOOM! (Well, you are on your own for breakfast). Pretty great, right?

And if bento boxes are your thing, I have great respect for you. You are also welcome to send your kid along with a homemade lunch if you so desire.

Regards,

Jordana Freeman, Community Services Manager, Mom of 2

Registration Information

Camp Kaboom
Age 6-12
7:30am-5:30pm (post care available)
Community Activities Building
Register Now

Camp Whatchamacallit
Age 6-12
8:00am-5:00pm (post care available)
Sandpiper Community Center
Register Now

Check out our theme weeks, registration information and more online at RedwoodCityCamps.org.

 

May the Fourth be with You All Summer

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Star Wars is not going away any time soon. Thankful, yes, we are. Our department embraces all people, wookies, parks, planets, droids, etc. We are also blindingly aware that many of your children are Star Wars obsessed (and okay, as are many of us parents). Today may be a relatively newly created holiday akin to National Grilled Cheese Day and Clean Up Your Room Day (May 10th, parents, it’s real), but we wanted to you to know that we celebrate Star Wars all year long and summer is no exception! Here is a short list of a few summer camps that can keep your child’s summer Star Wars mojo in full force.

maythe4thJedi Engineering with LEGO®
July 11-15th
Red Morton Community Center
Taught by the building experts at Play-well Teknologies
This is really the perfect storm. LEGO® and Star Wars, together in one place! If you were 7 years old, you might be shaking with excitement at the thought! The FORCE is definitely strong in both of these activities, and whether you are a young Padawan or a Jedi Master, we have a camp to fit your child’s engineering needs. Click the links below for more info and to register.

Jedi Engineering Using LEGO®
Age 5-6 years
9:00am – 12:00pm

Jedi Master Engineering Using LEGO®
Age 7-12 years
1:00 – 4:00pm

(We have bridge care & after care too if you need a longer day of childcare.)

Star Wars Lightsaber Camp!
July 5-8, July 25-29, and August 8-12
9:00am-3:00pm
Taught by Jedi Trainers at Peninsula Fencing Academy
Yes! Kids will get to hone their lightsaber skills in a controlled environment that does NOT entail whacking your antique vase off of your living room end table. This camp is full of *safe* battles, obstacle courses, and more! Jedi training utilizes balance, speed, athleticism, and vision. This camp guarantees to harness the force and provide an epic summer experience for trainees ages 6-12 years of age.

Click the video below to see it in action!

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Enjoy the 4th, everyone! And note, tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo, National Hoagie Day and National Oyster Day. Personally, I am looking forward to May 10th.

Tips for a Safe Halloween

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Updated with new info for 2015!

If you grew up listening to your parents tell you that every apple would have a razor blade inside, some of these helpful tips will sound OBVIOUS to you. If you are more the type to take candy from a stranger (which we will all be doing on Halloween night), then read on! We have put together a great list of safety tips over the years with help from our Redwood City Police Department to help all of us – adults and children alike, even your pets- have a safe and candyriffic Halloween night!

ADULTS
  • Welcome trick-or-treaters with your porch lights and any exterior lights on.
  • Remove any outdoor obstructions that could pose a threat to people walking onto your property. (toys, hoses, gardening equipment)
  • Patrol your street occasionally to discourage speeding motorists, acts of malicious mischief and crimes against children.
  • Report any suspicious or criminal activity to your police department immediately.   Call  9-1-1.
  • Do not give homemade or unwrapped treats to children.

MOTORISTS

  • Exercise extreme caution when driving a vehicle.  Be on the alert for excited youngsters, whose vision may be obscured by masks, darting out into traffic.
  • Leave yourself plenty of travel time. Drive slower than usual. It’s one night. Being late is a better option.
TRICK OR TREAT TIPS
Make sure your kids dress up safely
  • Make sure costumes are flame retardant so children aren’t in danger near burning jack-o-lanterns.
  • Keep costumes short to prevent trips, falls, and other bumps in the night.
  • Try make-up instead of a mask. Masks can be hot and uncomfortable, and they can obstruct a child’s vision, a dangerous thing when kids are crossing streets and going up and down steps.
  • Make sure kids wear light colors or put reflective tape on their costumes.
  • Wear comfortable, safe shoes.
Make trick-or-treating trouble free
  • Create a map of a safe trick-or treating route and set a time limit for your children to “trick-or-treat.” Your neighborhood Nextdoor group now has a candy map which can help you to create your safe-route!
  • Make sure older kids trick-or-treat with friends. Together, map out a safe route so you will know where they are going. Tell them to stop only at familiar homes where the outside lights are on and be very clear about your expectations for the evening.
  • Trick-or-treaters should always be in groups so they aren’t a tempting target for real-life goblins. Parents should accompany young children.
  • Try to get your kids to trick-or-treat while it’s still light out. If it’s dark, make sure someone has a flashlight and pick well-lighted streets.
  • Do not go inside anyone’s home. Remain on the porch at all times.
  • Do not accept rides from strangers.
  • Remind kids to keep a safe distance from moving cars.
  • Cross only at street corners, NEVER between parked cars, and never diagonally across an intersection.
  • Look in all directions before crossing the street, and obey all traffic signals. Walk, never run, across the street, and use sidewalks, not the street, for walking.
  • Do not take shortcuts through back yards, alleys or parks.
  • Do not eat any treats until parents have inspected them.
  • Discard any homemade or unwrapped treats.
Check all treats before eating
  • It’s hard for kids to hold back from eating their treats until they get home. One way to keep trick-or-treaters from digging in while they’re still out is to feed them a meal or a snack beforehand.
  • Check out all candy in a well-lighted place when your trick-or-treater gets home.
  • What to eat? Only unopened candies and other treats that are in original wrappers. Don’t forget to inspect fruit and homemade goodies for anything suspicious. By all means remind kids not to eat everything at once or they’ll be feeling pretty ghoulish for while!
  • Halloween can be a lot of fun for parents and kids alike–if everybody remembers the tricks and treats of playing it safe.
  • Call 9-1-1 if you suspect any tainted candy.

PET SAFETY
Just Like July 4th, Halloween can pose stressful for your animals as well as deadly.

  • Keep your pets away from the door. Dogs are especially territorial and this night can bring out the worst in them. A comfortable secure room in your home will keep your pet happy and they will be very thankful.
  • Tell your child if they see an animal, even one they know, to remember that they are in costume and may be extra scary to their 4-legged friend.
  • Two things that are DEADLY to dogs are Chocolate and the chemical, Xylitol. Xylitol can be found in sugar-free gum, candy, breath mints and baked goods– which we already told you not to hand out. 😉
  • PETMD says to keep your outdoor cats inside several days before and several days after Halloween. “Black cats are especially at risk from pranks or other cruelty-related incidents.”
  • Decorations and the excessive number of extension cords can pose harmful.
  • Make sure your animals are properly tagged in case they escape.
  • Check out www.petmd.com for more pet safety tips.

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Follow Redwood City Police Department here: @redwoodcitypd and here: facebook.com/RedwoodCityPD

Dear Parents, We Need Your Feedback!

THANK YOU!

 

Camp High 5 Boy

We cannot believe another Summer is almost over and our 2014 camp season will soon be banked forever into a memory vault full of fond experiences (only 1 week left!). Roughly 3500 smiles have entered our buildings, run across our fields, hiked through our parks, traveled across the greater Peninsula and made new friends as well as rekindled old ones from summers past. We also provided a wealth of job experiences to over 70 staff, 34 Leaders in Training and 47 Junior Lifeguards, and that doesn’t even include the 40 contracted businesses that ran many of the specialty, enrichment and sports camps your kids enjoyed!

campersWe are so very grateful for your participation this summer! We have also TREMENDOUSLY appreciated the attention you have given to our weekly email surveys. Some of your comments resulted in some really helpful suggestions that our staff took immediate action on and made changes for the following sessions. FUN is our business and we take it seriously!

If you have not already done so this summer, please take a moment to fill out all of the applicable surveys for any camps your child has attended, listed below.

Our wish is that your child had an extraordinary and memorable summer camp experience! We hope that it will continue to manifest itself in your household or carpools in the form of stories, camp songs and wonderment about blue monkey sightings.

 

Until Next Summer…

 

Redwood City Parks, Recreation and Community Services

 

It’s the End of Week One. Here’s What We’ve Learned.

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WOW! It’s been a great first week of Summer Camp Registration! Here are some FUN observations and THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW moving forward! We are constantly learning around here and want to share some of our findings with you.

First, Fun Observations…

  • Parents love discounts!  (Ok, we knew this) This week, most of you took advantage of our 10% camp discount! Register soon! You have until April 15th to claim it!
  • We had a record high this week of enrollment into Camp High-5 (AM, PM and Full Day options for 4-6 year olds). If you are planning on signing up for this camp, we suggest you do it sooner than later.
  • Over 80% of all first week registrations happened online.
  • American Express was our second highest used credit card type. We used to only accept Visa and Mastercard, but have since added Amex and Discover to our list!

Things you should know…

  • If you are using the “Wish list” functionality on our online registration page, we found that it only works once online registration has begun. We are very sorry if you were effected by this. If you haven’t tried it, wish lists are great to use for camp planning. You can save your ideas and then place them into your cart later when you are ready to register!
  • OOPS! We did not add the “Bridge” graphic to the Afternoon Camps that qualify for Bridge Care in our Activity Guide. If the Camp is from 1-4pm and is at Red Morton or the Community Activities Building, it likely qualifies. We will make sure to mark them on our summer camp website which will be posted very soon.
  • If you click on the Camp Instructor listed under each activity code, there is a dynamic link that has a bio and a link to their website. We are still populating this information, so some may still be blank, but check back with us soon if you want more info about a specific provider. Try it! Click the “Instructor” link for “Mad Science” on this page here.
  • Lastly, have we told you lately how much we appreciate you? WE DO!

Once again, we thank you for your patience while we all adjust to our new registration program.

That’s it! Have a great weekend, everyone! Remember, you can register for camps online 24/7!

A Camp A Day – Day 11: Math is Everywhere!

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It’s Day Eleven of our A Camp-A-Day Series. We have TWO camps that incorporate math concepts, but they are very different. Why? Because, Math is EVERYWHERE! Now many of our camps naturally have math concepts, like our science and engineering camps, but today we’ll highlight the ones that state it in the title. It’s Saturday, so we’ll stick with the obvious.

First, our very popular instructor extraordinaire, Dr. Peter Kohler, will be running a unique camp entitled, Nature’s Art & Math. Peter has been teaching art for many years and has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics. He teaches Math enrichment at The Nueva School where he has encouraged student’s creativity for more than 20 years. He’ll explain that Fibonacci Numbers in Nature is some of the most visually magical math you can discover. Kids will explore flowers, pine cones, sand dollars, the nautilus and other shells, and galaxies for their fascinating math. With a great variety of math and art materials: oil pastels, paints, clay, paper folding, colored tiles and cubes, to build and be creative in math. Be inventive with 2-D and 3-D visual patterns, blending Numbers and Shapes. Peter has inspired and brought out a love for math and art in many children by sharing its beauty, its magic and mystery.

math love

Math-Mania is another new camp that is taught by After-School Enrichment Instructor and Math Enthusiast, Holly Lindquist! Holly loves math and so do her kids! This inspired her to bring their love of math to YOUR KIDS! Holly will expose children to some very cool areas of math that may not have been covered in their classrooms. They’ll learn about Fibonacci numbers, Pascal’s triangle, fractals, secret codes, and much more! She’ll also explore fun activities and craft projects to deepen their understanding of mathematical concepts. You can visit Holly’s website for more info and math activities you can try at home!

Details…

Nature’s Art & Math
Age 5-10
with Dr. Peter Kohler
August 4 – August 8
Monday – Friday
9:00am-12:00pm
Location: Red Morton Community Center

Math-Mania
Age 9-11
with Holly Lindquist
July 21 – July 25 @ Red Morton Center
August 18 – August 22 @ Sandpiper Community Center
Monday – Friday
9:00am-1:00pm

Click here for the entire Summer Activity Guide!

A Camp A Day – Day 7: Camp Flexibility for Ages 4-6!

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hi51It’s Day Seven of our A Camp-A-Day Series, and this is one I think you will be EXTREMELY excited about if you have kids in the 4-6 year range! It’s Camp High-5, and there are oodles of options!

What is High – 5?
High 5 Camp offers a traditional Summer Camp with a twist! Designed by our Preschool Director, Edna English, High-5 Camp will provide an enriching theme each week to activate your child’s imagination and engage them in summer-long learning in a fun and playful way! Topics include: the Universe, Engineering/Building Concepts, Castles and Dragons, Theater, Science, the Animal Kingdom, cooking and of course, DINOSAURS! We’ll provide snack each day, ample supplies, and don’t worry, each theme will have different activities each week in the AM and PM modules. Yes, I said it… “PM!”

NEW THIS SUMMER! Camp High-5 in the Afternoon, PLUS Bridge Care!
Camp High-5 will now be running a morning option, an afternoon option and an ALL DAY option! What does this mean? It means FLEXIBILITY for an age group that usually has few choices! By adding “Bridge Care” as mentioned in one of our previous posts, we are allowing young campers to stay a full day! Let us give you some ideas. (Please note, “Bridge Care” is globally available for ages 4-14)

Options galore for Ages 4-6…

  • Select Camp High 5 all day from 9am to 4pm
  • Take High 5 in the morning (9am-12pm), sign up for “Bridge Care” from 12-1pm, and then experience a completely different camp from 1-4pm that our staff will walk your child to.
  • Take an enrichment or sports camp in the morning from 9am-12pm and then have our Bridge Care staff pick up your child for a supervised lunch and an afternoon of Camp High-5 until 4pm.
  • Take an enrichment or sports camp in the morning, sign up for Bridge Care, and then take another specialty camp in the afternoon!
  • It’s important to note that only camps marked with a “Bridge” will qualify for Bridge Care. BRIDGE CARE

Details

High -5 Camp
Ages 4-6
with Recreation Staff
Weekly from 6/23-8/15
9am-12pm, 1-4pm or 9am – 4pm
Half Day: $168/$148 Resident Discount
Full Day: $335/ $315 Resident Discount
Bridge Care 12-1pm: $48 / $40 Resident Discount or $10 lunchtime drop-in in a pinch!

Lastly…

Our activity guide will be posted online, TOMORROW!! See you  then!

 

A Camp A Day – Day 6: Putting out Fires…

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It’s Day Six of our A Camp-A-Day Series, let’s talk about the Junior Fire Academy!

This is one of those camps that I WISH I could have attended as a child! This is a great opportunity to engage your 11-15 year old boy or girl, for a week with a program designed and run by our very own Redwood City Fire Department Staff!

Description below…

Ever dream of being firefighter? Well stop dreaming and start doing at the Junior Fire Academy! Participants develop life long skills not only learning about emergency preparedness, but also how to work together to accomplish tasks. Taught by professional firefighters, participants learn skills including: First Aid, CPR, exit drills, fire extinguisher use, disaster preparedness, and home safety. In addition to the practical skills they can use everyday, participants learn what its like to be a firefighter by extinguishing fire with fire hoses, proper lifting techniques for moving ladders and hose, hose management, and they even get to climb the 100 foot tall ladder! All activities are optional, but positive, encouraging attitudes are not. This is a great opportunity to explore a day in the life of a firefighter!

Bring a bag lunch Monday-Thursday. On Friday at noon, family and friends are encouraged to attend the potluck lunch just before the Skills Presentation and Graduation Ceremony.

New Campers and Returning Campers Welcome!

July 28 though July 31
M-Th 10am-4p
F 10am-2pm
Location: Monday – Tuesday: PAL Building 3399 Bay Road, Redwood City
Wednesday – Friday: Fire Station 9, 755 Marshall St., Redwood City (long pants and closed toed shoes required)
$226 / $206 Resident Discount

A Camp A Day – Day 5: It’s Sew Fun!

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sewingIt’s Day Five of our A Camp-A-Day Series, and we think this one is sew fun.

We are excited this year to be partnering with Ralph’s Vacuum & Sewing Center in our own Downtown Redwood City! Kids will learn how to sew on REAL machines and they’ll complete plenty of cool projects. Topics include: sewing machine basics, tools and terminology, stitches (topstitch, edge stitch and basting), appliqué and adorning techniques). Besides  learning basic sewing skills, they’ll make fun, cute projects each week, like a drawstring bag, a pillow case with French seams, an appliqued pillow, a stuffed animal and a stylish zipper clutch! Plus, there are sew many weeks to choose from! SEW FUN!!!

Here are the details!

SEWING CAMP
Age 8-16
with Teresa Garcia, of Ralph’s Vacuum & Sewing Center
Monday – Friday
10am-1pm
Location: Ralph’s Vacuum & Sewing Center, 837 Main St. RWC
Fee: $249
6/9-6/13
6/16-6/20
6/30-7/3 no 7/4
7/7-7/11
7/14-7/18
7/21-7/25
7/28-8/1
8/4-8/8
8/11-8/15
8/18-8/22
8/25-8/29 $249

 

A Camp A Day – Day Two: The Camp Calendar

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It’s Day Two of our A Camp-A-Day Series, and we have a great sneak peek for you!

As promised, here is our Camp Calendar. It’s a snap-shot of what’s listed in our Activity Guide’s Summer Camp Section! Click the image below to view it full size! Please keep in mind that we do our best to list all of our programs, but not every single camp is itemized individually and sometimes the age ranges in the left hand column represent a combination of all of the camps listed in that row. 

We know many of you are already starting to plan your summer, hopefully this helps! See you tomorrow!

camp calendar redwood city
Click the image to enlarge