Tag: Recreation

We Are Parks & Recreation!

July is Parks & Recreation Month, and on this very last day, we wanted to share with you what our dedicated team has been up to during this unprecedented time.

Life has changed a lot since Shelter-In-Place was ordered back in March due to COVID-19. “Normal” personal and business routines were upended and we found ourselves having to rapidly adapt to providing essential services, on numerous fronts, to our residents. We had to suddenly close a number of community centers, parks, restrooms, and recreational amenities while keeping larger parks open for individual exercise and going for a walk; focus our resources on food support for children, families, and seniors; launch a massive rental assistance program; open showers, porta-potties and hand washing stations for the homeless; redeploy staff; work from home; develop a virtual recreation center site; use our collective creativity to develop virtual camps and other programs, and step up to the plate and provide critical child care camps while wearing a smile under a mask.

We are so proud of the PRCS Team who have shown heart, determination, care, and a can-do spirit for our residents and for each other. Here’s a quick snapshot of what we have accomplished!

  • The Veterans Memorial Senior Center has served 26,000 meals to over 600 seniors in 99 days.
  • Kept in touch with our senior population via the drive-through lunch pickups and personal phone calls.
  • Fair Oaks Community Center has provided continuity of the provision of homeless services such as shelter referrals, shower programs, food, toiletries, and other basic needs.
  • We continued to manage the Homeless Shower Program at Hoover Pool; and we continued our partnership with the Dignity on Wheels Program (mobile shower and laundry service).
  • We’ve serviced and sanitized 20 handwashing stations, 16 Porta-potties, and provided showers for our homeless population.
  • In addition, our Human Services Team has provided tons of emergency food:
      • Brown Bag Distribution, 2 times per month, 170 households (Second Harvest)
      • Family Harvest Food Distribution, 275 households (monthly) (Second Harvest)
      • Daily emergency food distribution, 20 households (MWF) for housed community members (Second Harvest)
      • Providing 10 emergency groceries and toiletries per day for unhoused community members (St Vincent de Paul and Second Harvest)
      • Sandwiches on Sunday—80 lunches every Sunday (Coalition of Churches)
  • 876 households have been assisted with $1.7 million in COVID19 Relief Fund Rental Assistance.
  • Provided logistical and daily support for the new outdoor dining program, Eat, Sip & Be in RWC.
  • We have planted and replanted just under 100 trees in Red Morton Park.
  • We are nearing completion on our incredible Magical Bridge Playground (to be opened when the state lifts restrictions).
  • We revamped and reimagined summer camps, wrote new policies, and safely delivered in-person camps in Redwood City & Redwood Shores for over 230 kids.
  • Created virtual programming for youth, teens, and seniors, and an online portal for all information regarding COVID-19.
  • Supported child care programs at the Fair Oaks Community Center and the Sandpiper Community Center.
  • Found ways to safely reopen limited park amenities.
  • The Parks Division teams were recently outfitted with electric leaf blowers and electric walk-behind mowers which will reduce ongoing maintenance costs and will be much quieter!
  • Partnered with the Parks & Arts Foundation for the first-ever Virtual Chalk For Fun Festival.
  • Launched Shakespeare at Home via our ongoing partnership with San Francisco Shakespeare Festival (LIVE Virtual performances through September 27)

We promise to continue to provide City Services, keep you up-to-date, work on future programming, and do the best we can with the resources we have during this incredibly challenging time.

We have been here the whole time. We are Parks and Recreation and Community Services!

Enjoy our video!

Parents, don’t stress. We got you.

The Summer 2020 Activity Guide was mailed over the weekend and registration opens for residents, tomorrow, March 10! And don’t worry, you can do it safely from your own home, online!

RWC_Summer2020_frontcover-web

There are 50 pages of camp activities waiting for you, and while we love giving you an incredible amount of options, we also realize that this is a lot to sift through. Many of us here are fellow parents, and we get it, planning can be overwhelming. So, we have dissected the guide to help alleviate the stress of the summer camp scavenger hunt, and have once again, created some cheat sheets. This is where we *fist bump!*

Below you will find links to our valuable planning tools that we hope will provide some guidance and quick reference for you.

Camp Calendar

This 3-page document shows all activities happening each week, plus references the page numbers they can be found on in the Activity Guide.

2020 Camp Calendar

Bridge Care Cheat Sheet

Use this guide to see which morning and afternoon camps can be paired up each week to create a customized full-day camp experience for your child. We only offer Bridge Care for 8 weeks each summer so check camp descriptions carefully as some of our other providers offer options to stay for lunch in between camps on off weeks as well as host their own aftercare (this especially applies to you, Sandpiper parents!). All camps listed here qualify for Pre & After Care as well! Learn more about Bridge Care here.

2020 Bridge Care Cheat Sheet

Full Day Camps At-A-Glance

Download this guide to help you figure out which programs run all-day and which of them are attached to pre-care and after-care. This document is more comprehensive than the Bridge Care one and shows correlating page numbers, ages, and class codes to make registration a breeze!

Full-Day Camp Cheat Sheet 2020

You can find all of these documents on our website as well at www.RedwoodCityCamps.org!

And, don’t stress. We’ve got your back! Feel free to contact our staff directly for suggestions, questions, or maybe just a little moral support.

Here, Parents… let us help.

RWC_Summer2019_frontcover500xOur new Summer Activity Guides were mailed last week and registration opened for residents on March 12th! We are extremely excited to again be bringing you a whopping 50 pages of summer camps and activities this year! While we love giving you an incredible amount of options, we also realize that this is a lot to sift through. Many of us here are fellow parents, and we get it, planning can be overwhelming. So to help alleviate the stress of the summer camp scavenger hunt, we’ve created some cheat sheets. This is where we fist bump.

Below you will find links to a few of the valuable planning tools that we hope will provide some guidance and quick reference for you.

camp-calendarCamp Calendar

This 3-page document shows all activities happening each week, plus references the page numbers they can be found on in the Activity Guide.

2019 Camp Calendar

 

Please keep in mind that we have many other wonderful camps that are not listed in either of these documents below due to their start and end times not aligning with Bridge Care or what we feel constitutes a full day. 

BridgeCareFlyer2019

Bridge Care Cheat Sheet

Use this guide to see which morning and afternoon camps can be paired up each week to create a customized full day camp experience for your child. We only offer Bridge Care for 8 weeks each summer so check camp descriptions carefully as some of our other providers offer options to stay for lunch in between camps on off weeks as well as host their own aftercare (this especially applies to you, Sandpiper parents!). All camps listed here qualify for Pre & After Care as well! Learn more about Bridge care here.

2019 Bridge Care Cheat Sheet

Full Day Camp- imageFull Day Camps At-A-Glance

Download this guide to help you figure out which programs run all-day and which of them are attached to pre-care and after-care. This document is more comprehensive than the Bridge Care one and shows correlating page numbers, ages, and class codes to make registration a breeze!

Full Day Camp Cheat Sheet

 

We hope you will enjoy these tools and that you will find the perfect camp experience!

You can find all of these documents on our website as well at www.RedwoodCityCamps.org!

And, don’t stress. We’ve got your back! Feel free to contact our staff directly for suggestions, questions, or maybe just a little moral support.

 

Summer Playground Safety Reminders

Summer will technically be here tomorrow (June 20), and with the current record high temperatures, we thought it would be a great to remind parents and providers about some basic playground safety tips.

The City of Redwood City designs playgrounds that meet and often exceed all top safety standards to ensure safe play for all, but negligence and inappropriate behavior can put your child’s health at risk.  A study issued by the CPSC evaluated playground injury cases and found that from 2009 to 2014, nearly 1.5 million injuries associated with playground equipment were treated nationally in emergency rooms, translating to about 243,000 ER-treated injuries per year. More than half of these injuries occurred in children between the ages of 5 and 9 years of age.

Here are some safety tips to keep in mind while visiting our parks that can help your child play safely, not only on hot days, but all year-round!

  • Always supervise kids and make sure kids use playground equipment appropriate for their age.
  • Always be aware of the sun and weather conditions, and do not assume that the equipment is safe because it is made of plastic, especially slides. We do not have to be in a heat wave in order for equipment to heat up and cause burns. If it feels hot to your hand, it may be too hot for a child’s bare skin!
  • Remember that not only playground equipment, but playground surfacing, may also cause burns. We recommend wearing proper footwear.
  • Never attach ropes, jump ropes, pet leashes or strings to playground equipment; children can strangle on these.
  • Make sure children’s clothing does not have any drawstrings as they can catch on slides and other equipment.
  • Please remove bike helmets when on playground equipment. A helmet may get stuck on a piece of equipment (and even in a tree) and strangle a child.
  • Teach children that pushing, shoving or crowding while on the playground can be dangerous.
  • If you see that equipment is broken in one of our parks, please report it immediately by calling (650) 780-7250 or providing notification at MyRWC.

Additional resources about playground safety

Wishing you and your family a fun and safe summer!

Try “everything” this summer

MiniHawk

We are firm believers in kids trying all sorts of activities to stimulate their interests and find their passions. One of our main purposes in the business of Parks and Recreation is to provide a wide variety of introductory opportunities for people of all ages to experience, learn and grow! Summer is an opportune time for parents to dip their children’s toes into the water of multiple activities, and one area where diversification is becoming increasingly important is sports. We asked Brett Gardner, owner of our local Skyhawks Sports Franchise to share her thoughts on this topic. 

Much has been written over the past several years about specializing in one sport vs. letting kids play as many sports as possible. There is all this literature that benchmarks what age kids should be when they specialize. I come down firmly in the camp of NEVER. Unless your child is an elite gymnast or dancer, there is no argument to be made for specializing in a sport. Ask professional athletes how many of them “specialized” in the sport they now play. I’d hazard a guess that the answer is none.

burnoutBut, sports have gotten really out of hand thanks to the business model behind competitive sports. Coaches are hired to develop players for college sports programs. That’s what they are paid to do. I hear parents talking about this even with a team of eight-year-olds!

If you are reading this and you have teenagers, I hope you’re nodding your head in agreement. Parents of younger children, read on. Sports is not a career for your child. It’s an activity and it should be one of many.

But, more importantly, not all kids like sports. As the parent of two very athletic children and the owner of a company that runs sports camps, I should be shouting from rooftops about the benefits of sports. But, I have also seen what happens when kids are pushed too hard.

Girl getting ready to leave the baseI am a big believer in the “try everything” model of parenting. You never know what’s going to stick. When my kids were little, we tried it all — from ball sports to gymnastics to theater to martial arts to dance.  Some of it stuck and much of it didn’t. The questions we asked our kids were, “was it fun?” and “did you learn anything worthwhile?” Next, we asked them if they wanted to do that activity again.

With child number one, the answer was invariably, yes. With the other one, it was almost always, NO! Different kids, different interests. Even though child number one seemed to like everything and child number two seemed to hate most things, I still think the try everything model was good for both of them.

With limited time during the school year, we often used summer camps to let our kids try different activities. Many families didn’t understand why we would do this. If my daughter was “an athlete,” why weren’t we sending her only to sports camps? She plays ball sports nine months out of the year. Does she really need more sports at age eight? We thought it was far more important for her to experience different things. So we encouraged her to try science camps, cooking lessons, etc. She loved some of them and was less enthusiastic about others. But, she got to try something new, which was the most important thing.

As summer is looming, think about things your kids have never done before.  It could be a new sport, like flag football. Or, it could be dance or robotics. Try everything. You just never know what will stick!

SkyhawksTo sign your child up for one of Brett Gardner’s Skyhawks Sports Camps in Redwood City, click here. there are full day and half day camps available. Many are scheduled to coincide with Bridge Care and After Care. For registration info visit www.redwoodcitycamps.org

Brett_GardnerAbout Brett Gardner

Brett Gardner considers herself a bail-out from Silicon Valley after having been involved in the early stages of several companies. She is a coach at heart, having both played and coached soccer and basketball for several years. She currently owns Skyhawks Sports for the Peninsula and spends her Sundays with 70 of her favorite preschoolers teaching t-ball, soccer and basketball.

Summer Camp Planning Tools- Cheat Sheets!

bridge-care-header

If you read only one of our posts about Summer Camp, this is the one. 

Yesterday, we posted about some new additions to our flex care program and we PROMISED you another at-a-glance grid to help you easily piece together a Bridge Care Plan. While we know it’s a lot of fun to mix and match AM and PM camps and design the perfect summer program for your child, we also know what a scavenger hunt it can be. In addition, we decided it would be beneficial to create a FULL-DAY-CAMP-Cheat-Sheet that provides you with a quick and easy way to identify which all-day options are available each week. So, we went ahead and created both for you!

Please keep in mind that we have many other wonderful camps that are not listed in either of these documents due to their start and end times not aligning with Flex Care or what we feel constitutes a full day. 

Bridge-Care-FlyerBridge Care Cheat Sheet

If you are asking “What’s Bridge Care?” Check out yesterday’s post which explains it at length. Use this guide to see which morning and afternoon camps can be paired up each week to create a full day. All camps listed qualify for Pre & After Care as well!

Bridge Care Cheat Sheet

Full Day Camps At-A-Glance

Download this guide to help you figure out which programs run all-day and which of them are attached to pre-care and after-care. This document is more comprehensive than the Bridge Care one and shows correlating page numbers, ages, and class codes to make registration a breeze!

FULL-DAY-CAMP-Cheat-Sheet

We hope you will enjoy these tools and that you will find the perfect camp experience!

You can find all of these documents on our website as well as our full Summer Camp Calendar at www.RedwoodCityCamps.org!

Summer is Coming… Here’s a Sneak Peek!

2017 Camp Calendar

Planning. Is. Hard.

Yes. We said it. Planning is hard. And for some of you, Summer planning for your children can be one of the most daunting tasks. We’re not here to stress you out, we’re here to help! Our Summer Activity Guide is now in the capable hands of our publisher and will be delivered to the Post Office by Monday, March 13th. In the meantime, we are offering you a few valuable pages from this issue, and a promise (*pinky swear*) that we will release the online flip book early next week!

Click the link below to view this year’s Summer Camp Calendar! Please keep in mind that we do our best to list all of our programs on the calendar, but not every single camp is recognized individually. Sometimes, the age ranges in the left-hand column represent all camp offerings in that program area, but the specific breakdown may vary from week to week.

Click here to view the 2017 Summer Camp Calendar

Stay tuned for more Summer Camp blog posts. We have a ton of fun coming your way as well as some exciting early bird discounts, new camp vendors, and the introduction of pre-care!! This Activity Guide is our largest edition to date! So don’t stress. We will have plenty of options!

Happy Planning!

 

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