After a summer of adventures including trips to museums, mornings under the sprinklers at Fort Greene Park, and tours of New York City neighborhood essentials like the grocery store and bank, summer camp wrapped up for both the junior and senior campers.
Determined to save the best for last, Brittany led her campers uptown on the red line to the Bronx zoo on her last full day with them, where the Madagascar exhibit has been a children's favorite since the animated African creatures first filled the big screen a few years ago.The interactive exhibits were perfectly suited to the youngest campers, including a faux log with fun hidden facts about the exhibit's animals to discover underneath each knot of wood.
While the junior campers had fun interacting with the children's exhibits, it proved to be even more exciting watching the baboons interact with each other. Undaunted by the presence of the several dozen zoo visitors who were looking on, two baboons who apparently had a score to settle chased each other around their zoo habitat, yelling and making noises, their arms waving in urgency the whole time!
By the time Tess, Luke, Ben and the other campers were listening to the lions roar a few minutes later, bellies were starting to roar and growl as well, so Brittany and the little ones enjoyed a picnic lunch before heading home---once they were safely out of range of the hungry lions, of course!
After recharging with some sandwiches and fruit, there was one more stop Brittany wanted to make before heading back from the BX to the BK. Always a romantic, the lead teacher wanted to pay a visit to baby Cupid! The little giraffe, aptly named for his February 14th birthday, was nonplussed by his visitors, continuing to gobble leaves and weave his long neck around his habitat while the campers oohed and aahed around him. After baby Cupid sidled up to his mom for some comfort, it was time to get the campers back to waiting moms, dads, grammies and nannies as well!
What better way to spend one of the last days of summer camp (and junior camp's teacher Brittany's last day with the kids) than enjoying some of the child-friendly splendors of our very own borough? After months of exploring the sites of Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island and even Queens, camp came full circle as Edwin's senior campers spent the day at the Brooklyn Museum, while Brittany enjoyed her day with the younger tykes at Fort Greene Park.
The campers sure were excited to graduate from outings to the Brooklyn Children's Museum to a day at the more adult Brooklyn Museum! Finally they were being treated like the mature patrons of the arts that they are, right? Wrong! Little did Julian, Jolie, and the rest of the group know that there day was to be occupied by a kid-friendly scavenger hunt on the Egyptian floor of the Brooklyn Museum. With Edwin leading the way, campers had a chance to learn about ancient art as they sought out specific statues and paintings, drew pictures of exhibits, and learned about the meanings of the floor's sculptures.
While the senior campers headed to the Underhill play space to enjoy lunch and some playtime in the backyard, the juniors were having lunch in Fort Greene Park. Since Brittany had to leave after lunch to catch a flight to South Carolina to visit her family, Kisha came to meet her daughter Haven and the other campers at the park. We all know what fun Kisha's Miles, Marley and Mozart music class is, so no one was surprised by the fun she had in store for the campers that afternoon: a trip to Blue Marble for an afternoon treat! While Sebastian enjoyed a cone full of mint chip ice cream, Zack let much of his summer fun drip down the front of his shirt!
Summer is always a time of exciting growth and transition, and this year New York City Explorers was no exception! While we have made many memories at 388 Atlantic Avenue, with our family of Explorers growing every day, from the little ones who attend Explorers Club and drop-off babysitting to the parents and toddlers who join us each week for Miles, Marley and Mozart and Kid Fitness classes, it's time for our space to grow as well! An exciting new play space is in the works, and in the meantime, our Underhill location remains open during the times that 2: Cool for School is not in session. Be sure to check our newly revamped website at www.nycityexplorers.com for details about hours, special events and other updates.
With camp over for the summer, and a new play space on the way, Explorers Club has found a new home of its own at a cozy new location in the neighborhood, and a few weeks ago Gayla, Amy, Ka Yiu, Natalie and the cutest tykes Brooklyn has to offer welcomed Brittany back into the fold from her tenure as head junior camp teacher! After spending the summer with the campers and then spending an extra-long Labor Day weekend visiting family in South Carolina, Brittany's return as our third Explorers Club teacher was long-awaited and well-received! Also visiting from South Carolina that day was Haven and Shelton's grandma, their daddy's mama! Lili, Simone, Gayla and Amy were lucky enough to meet Mrs. Gandsy as she accompanied Kisha to view the new space in action and drop off Haven and Shelton with the other Explorers for the day. A visit from Grandma is always a welcome treat, and when it's a grammy who can cook Southern soul food as well as dish out milk and cookies that's even harder to beat!
Make new friends, keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold! Our Explorers may not be old enough to be Scouts yet, but they sure did appreciate welcoming back all of their old gold pals who returned to Explorers Club after a break for the summer. While Marlow and Laudan were greeted with excited glee by Lili, Simone, Tessa, Hana, Lev and Shayna upon return from summer hiatus, for our newest Explorers, including Reza, Philip and Rose, introductions were in order.
After the teachers had finished gushing over the beautiful mop of curls that had appeared on Laudan's head over the summer, everyone sat down to enjoy their first circle time as a full group since June! While Baby Shelton requested the Alphabet Song over and over again, shouting, "A!B! A! B!" Marlow, Shayna and Liliana had the majority of votes, and the final song that morning was Baa Baa Black Sheep by a landslide!
Kid Fitness and the other enrichment classes had yet to begin for the Fall, but Laudan and Marlow had the chance to meet one of their new teachers early! During an afternoon at the playground on Pacific Street, Haven's dad Chris stopped by, along with his cycling pal Vino, and Explorer favorite as the high energy teacher of last semester's Kid Fitness. The grown-ups were stopping by to say hello during a break from---what else?---exercising, a bike ride through Brooklyn!
Marlow certainly enjoyed meeting Vino. (Who could resist his infectious positivity and energy, which make him a natural fit for the New York City Explorers family?) The boy who really won Marlow's heart, however, was Lev, who spent ten minutes of his lunch time feeding Marlow grapes one by one! Talk about puppy love; Lev was positively smitten!
A few days after Lev met Marlow, he and his sister Shayna, the Explorers Club's youngest set of twins, rang in their second birthday! Though the terrific twins waited until the following weekend to celebrate with a family party at home, their mom brought some extra sweetness to the rest of the group with a tray of brownies! After lunch, Reza, Liliana, Tessa and the gang sang Happy Birthday before the twins took their first naps as two-year-olds.
Shayna must have been feeling the stress of getting older, because while Lev slept like, well, a baby, Shayna spent an hour tossing and turning before Amy invited her on a walk to Underhill to enjoy the play space and backyard while the weather still allowed it. Luckily for the two girls, one of our most requested Bag of Tricks babysitters, Yana, and her charge Marley, had the same idea, so while Amy enjoyed the quiet change of pace from the hustle and bustle of Explorers Club, Shayna and Marley enjoyed having the rocking horse, dollhouse and play kitchen all to themselves!
Birthday wishes from Cristina and Yana must have set Shayna on a path of thinking about the new responsibilities that are facing her as an older, wiser woman, because upon returning to Explorers Club after her outing with Amy, Shayna took it upon herself to check her brother's diaper and announce its contents to Gayla, Amy and Brittany, and later in the afternoon she told Lev to wash his hands after playing in the courtyard. It looks like Tessa, Shelton, Haven and the other Explorers have a mother hen on their hands.
With celebrations going on for many of us, including Lili and Simone, who spent the next weekend visiting their grandpa, we extended our condolences to our most artistic teacher, Gayla, who lost her Grandmother recently. Gayla's grammy lived a long happy life, and has left her family with a lifetime of wonderful memories to enjoy.
They're the people that you meet when you're walking down the street... Yes, a friend is a person in the neighborhood, and the crew at 2: Cool for School was so happy to welcome two new friends to the neighborhood this week! Two-year-olds Jackson got along so well on his first day with Tommy that Tommy came in asking for his new pal the next time he came into the play space.
The air was heavy with excitement on Jackson's second day, which also saw the first day of Exploration for 2 1/2-year-old Vikram and a trip to the library for the entire group! It's a good thing Cristina was on hand to help Sarah manage the outing, because when it was time to leave, Tommy discovered that his dad had taken his shoes home accidentally, leaving Cristina to tote him on her back the whole way! She would have gotten some respite on the way back, since Sarah had agreed to carry the tyke back, if it hadn't been for Ocean falling asleep during the library's story time, leaving her in need of Cristina's loving arms for the walk home.
Ocean must have had a late night indeed to have fallen asleep during story time; The excitement in the air was palpable for the rest of the tots, each one hoping to find the perfect book to check out as they poured over books in the children's room. When Tommy's shoeless feet were safely back at the play space, they hit the ground running,as Kisha and Keyanna had surprised the group by opening the play space to our regular members a few minutes early! It may have been unexpected, but Sarah's policy is the more the merrier when it comes to playmates for her Explorers!
