September Saturday Clubs!

Date posted: October 2, 2014

It has been quite an eventful September with our Saturday Kids Club and Young Adult Club programs starting back up! Things had been too quiet at the Given location, so it has truly been a welcome sight to have camp participants and staff back on grounds, having fun and getting messy once again. Saturday Clubs are some of my favorite programs that we offer here at Stepping Stones, primarily because it keeps the fun going throughout the year and is a chance to get to know all of our fabulous participants and families even more.

Our first day of Saturday Clubs in September was on September 13^th where we kicked things off with a huge bang!

Kids Club jumped into the changing season with a ‘Fall Inspiration’-themed club! Although the weather reminded us of the summer, it was still fun to do all of the fall activities that make us love this season so much! Some of our favorite activities included:

• Twisted Trees at Arts & Crafts – here we twisted brown paper bags into the limbs and branches of trees and glued it down onto a piece of paper with twisted orange, red & yellow tissue paper to represent the leaves.
• Pumpkin Puffy Paint at Sensory – we were able to make our own sticky puffy paint by combining shaving cream, glue & orange food coloring. We had fun spreading this out all over the paper and then cutting out eyes, a nose and a mouth from black foam to turn it into pumpkins!

Young Adult Club experienced a different kind of evening, where they tapped into their creative spirits for our ‘Art Exploration’-themed club! We wanted to put the focus on art, as opposed to crafts, and I think our participants enjoyed being encouraged to let their creativity shine through. Some of our favorite activities from this evening included:

• Kandinsky Circles – here we celebrated the famous artist, Kandinsky, by attempting to imitate his unique circle designs. We used the rims of cups to dip into different colored paints and had fun making unique patterns on our own papers.
• Color War – This was our evening program that all participants get involved in! We dressed ourselves in white jumpsuits & shower caps and began throwing paint powder and spraying paint mixtures at each other – as Coordinator, it was so fun to see every single participant with a huge smile on their face at this activity.

Our second day of Saturday Clubs was on September 27^th, and we were again blessed with beautiful weather that allowed us to take most of our activities outside!

Kids Club had a very active day as we celebrated the annual “SKC Olympics”! Participants checked-in at the ‘Olympic Athlete Registration’ table and then moved on to participate in some fun activities that included:

• Laurel Crowns at Nature – Here participants went on a nature walk to collect leaves and then glued them onto a paper crown that they had made. I can’t tell you how many leaf crowns I saw walking around the grounds, it was a big hit!
• Fruit Loop Medals at Arts & Crafts – Participants worked on their fine-motor skills by threading fruit loops onto string to create their own medals and Olympic necklaces. I’m not sure how many of these made it home as I spotted a number of participants snacking on their medals throughout the day! 

Young Adult Club also celebrated their annual “SYAC Olympics!” We kept busy all evening with Olympic-themed activities and then wrapped up the program with a ‘Closing Ceremony’ where we made our uniforms, decorated with face paint and went on a procession outside with our glow sticks. Other favorites included:

• Olympic Medal Making – here participants molded their own medals out of air-dry clay, and then used tooth picks to create unique designs on each one.
• Olympic Charades – We put an Olympic spin on charades by having participants act out different Olympic sports and have the rest of the group guess what it is! I never realized how many skilled actors we had in our group!

Don’t forget to check back in at the end of October to learn all about what we did this upcoming month! Thanks for reading!

Bridget