Fayette summer programs begin

At the Harold D. Fayette Elementary School, children can be found running through the halls and engaging in a broad range of creative activities as part of the summer program, which is officially underway.

Any young student’s interest can be met at Fayette during the summer. Hundreds of students from both the Merrick and Bellmore areas engage in activities that present challenges or crafts to be completed in creative ways. A spin on traditional academics can be found too.

“The program breaks the boundaries of traditional classrooms,” said Cristina Schmohl, a representative of the North Merrick School District. “In a way, it prepares the kids for a workplace environment and challenges their brainstorming skills.”

Children entering kindergarten to 6th grade not only learn Spanish, practice with wind, brass and string instruments and play in the school’s playground, they also engage in hands-on activities that help them learn technical skills that could inspire a future career.

Two summer camp programs, Scope and Camp Invention, bring fun and creative activities to the school that implement technical and practical problem solving skills.

Jessica Marciana, a representative from Scope, said they bring the “summer fun” and recreational activities. Students can enjoy the outdoor heat while making tie-dye shirts, crafting projects, playing organized team sports or simply having freedom on the playground with the school’s jungle gym. Kids can also cool off with some water play in the school’s sprinklers.

Aside from the traditional summer recreational activities, Scope also introduces children to yoga. During one session with a parent volunteer, the kids did “freeze yoga,” freezing in a yoga position when accompanying music stopped. The children enjoyed freezing in poses like the “star pose” and the “downward facing dog.” Some could not hold still, though, and had fun flipping and jumping in place.

Scope also allows for themed days such as “favorite color” day, in which kids wear as much of their favorite color as possible and win prizes on who wore it best. There was also patriot day for July 4, and superhero dress-up day, a favorite of the students, said Marciana. One student enjoyed it enough that he came to Fayette the next day still wearing his Batman costume.

Camp Invention focuses on technical activities with engineering themes, allowing kids to get hands-on with technology. One activity has students break apart old keyboards and electronics and create something new. One student’s imagination helped make an old television remote into a cardboard train with a working headlight.

Students also put together small plastic crickets with solar panels on their backs, which make them hop forward when a flashlight is shone on them. They have to help the cricket get across a “river” with obstacles on it using teamwork. Kids also made a miniature adventure park for toy monkeys. “I made them a zip line!” said Lexi, who also included a water slide in the park.

The children in the summer program can also take part in a Spanish class, giving them a head-start on a second language course, and band or orchestra classes.

“The students are able to continue their music playing skills” in the program, said Gary Beck, who handles the students playing string instruments in the orchestra. The students playing instruments challenge themselves by practicing the instruments and also learn teamwork and coordination.

Special education students also get a spotlight in the program with an extended year class that ends on Aug. 10. A “different way of looking at special education” is implemented, said Schmohl, in which they look at behavior analysis and break constructive assignments into steps to help the students achieve success.

Camp Invention and Scope run until July 27 at Fayette. The reading, Spanish and music programs run to Aug. 1, with the music program ending with a concert that day.