The Hi-Hills Herald: 2013 Issue #1

The Hi-Hills Herald June 28, 2013

Issue #1

Top News at Hi-Hills Day Camp!

Summer Has Officially Begun!

Mad Science Week at Hi-Hills

This week’s theme was Mad Science, and it was truly a robot invasion here at Hi-Hills. Campers got into the Mad Science spirit with cool robot projects during arts and crafts. In music, everyone was excited to create skits set to the film scores from robotthemed movies like “Transformers” and “Wall-E”. Every day, our campers amazed us with their scientific knowhow during our trivia contests.

We also had special guests Black Rocket join us this week. The technology education pioneers guided our campers through the process of brainstorming, filming, and editing their own short films.

Celebrating our 46th Summer!

Table of Contents:

There was a parade of robots during Friday’s morning assembly, and it was great to see so many campers getting involved in our weekly dress up day. Finally, we ended the week on a high note with our council ring celebration, where our bunks showed off the cheers they’d been working on all week.

Note from Camp Directors

Camp is truly off to a great start, and it was amazing to see so many new faces mixed in with returning campers. We all can’t wait for Week #2 to arrive!

Kinder Camp 11

Bunk Updates

2 3-6

Birthdays This Week

7

Dates to Remember

8

Program News

8-10

Upcoming Dress Days 11 Featured Recipe 11 Athletics 11 Trivia Winners 12 Counselors in Training 12 Teen Travel 12 Special Events 12

Gill St. Bernard’s School, 25 St. Bernard’s Road, Gladstone, NJ Phone: 908-234-0067 • Fax: 908-234-1611 • Email: info@hihills.com hihills.com • www.facebook.com/hihills

te o N A ur o m fro Camp rs to c e r i D

Hello Hi-Hills!

Dear Hi-Hills, Welcome to the 2013 season of Hi-Hills Day Camp and the first edition of our “new look” for the weekly newsletter.

The aim of The Hi-Hills Herald is to share the “magic” we create each day on the GSB campus with our entire camp community.

Summer is off to an incredible start here at Hi-Hills. The weather has been beautiful (for the most part), our staff is awesome and the children are having a blast. It’s hard for us to believe the first week of camp is coming to a close already. Each day we take part in so many different activities that each day alone could fill an entire week by itself.

Many of the highlights from the week have been revisited throughout this publication. Campers have participated in everything from athletics, swim, and tennis to the arts, technology and nature!

We hope you enjoy reading this newsletter as much as we did. Have a great weekend and we’ll see you Monday for another action packed week here at camp.

To all our campers – rest up! Week #2 is set to be AMAZING!

Have a lovely weekend, Jack, Cindy, and Beth

Bunk Upda tes

Bunk 1: Miss Kathleen’s and Miss Monica’s F ishies

The Fishies joined up with the Leopards this week and we’re so proud of how well the groups worked together. Quinn loved swinging around in dance. She’s a real natural! All of our campers loved going swimming and participating in all the special programs like art, music, dancing and nature! We also had fun showing off our robot costumes at Friday’s morning assembly. The Fishies can’t wait for Monday to come so we can see all our friends from camp.

Bunk 2: Miss Stefanie’s and Miss Erin’s Leopards It was a great week for the Leopards! Daniel sang all the tunes in music. Annabelle was so limber in our yoga class. Barrett enjoyed making a mask in art which we showed off to the whole camp! Angela had a great time in cooking class making ice cream. Finnley showed off his muscles in martial arts as he did his kicks and punches. When Mr. Nature brought his animals to visit us, Alex handled all the snakes without hesitation. Zach showed off his tennis skills and Arianna was so excited to make a wearable necklace in art class.

Bunk Upda tes Bunk 9: T igersharks Bunk 9 had a great first week at camp! Each of the campers has done something great to highlight the week. Ian showed off his athletic skills in all of the league sports. Matthew proved to be quite the outdoorsmen, catching the most fish on Monday’s trip. Chris always shows great sportsmanship, and Zach always has a great sense of humor. Michael is extremely polite and is always willing to help the counselors clean up activities without us even asking him. Jake won Thursday’s trivia prize for knowing the largest planet in our solar system: Jupiter!

Bunk 10: T he Rockin’ Chatterboxes Bunk 10 kicked off the first week of camp in style! We played soccer and Monkey Ball with the sports counselors, and the girls did a great job of working together. Ava and Ellie are great underwater swimmers, and Campbell used her musical talents to help us come up with our bunk cheer. Annabel and Colette really enjoyed nature activities. Isabel worked really hard on beautiful jewelry in art class and Caroline caught two fish (out of a total of four) on our trip Thursday.

Congrats to Bunk 10 for a fun and adventurous week!

Bunk 11: T he Grumpy Giants It was a great first week for our bunk. We have a diverse group of campers who all bring something special to the bunk.

Brad always has an amazing attitude and participates in every activity.

Austin excels in sports like soccer and Ga-Ga. Nicholas participated in cooking club and made some picture perfect chocolate ice cream. Meanwhile, we’re all proud of Phillip, who swam underwater for the first time in instructional swim.

The Grumpy Giants are already getting excited for week two!

Bunk Upda tes Bunk 12: Beautiful Brave Butterflies Bunk 12 started camp with a bang! We’re so proud of how our campers bonded during an excellent first week. The girls enjoyed meeting all the animals in nature. They loved swimming at the pool and trying to beat their counselors in Monkey Ball. During arts and crafts the girls demonstrated how incredibly creative they all are. After much thought and consideration, we came up with our bunk name and cheer. Jenn and Jamie are proud to present or bunk: The Beautiful Brave Butterflies.

We’re looking forward to making the summer of 2013 the best ever!

Bunk 13: T he Fantastic Fury Bunk 13 had a great first week at Hi-Hills! The most exciting activity this week was our involvement with the Black Rocket program. Our campers wrote, directed and starred in their own film about alien invaders with a crippling weakness to Oreo cookies. We also had a blast learning proper archery technique from Elliot, different swim strokes at instructional swim and how to build an awesome robot with Johnny in Arts and Crafts. With week one coming to a close, we have new skills and new friends to take with us into what is sure to be an even better week two.

Bunk 14: T he Sugar Rush Bunk 14 hit the ground running and our girls formed a great bond right away. During our brainstorming session, Gabriella had the winning name: The Sugar Rush. Maddie put most of the words together for our camp cheer so were ready to present ourselves at the camp council meeting on Friday. One of the first highlights of this camp session was our collaboration with Black Rocket. The girls wrote, acted in and filmed their own video. We’re totally impressed by how creative each of our girls is. When we aren’t busy with all our favorite camp activities, you can find us playing Killer Frog, our new bunk craze!

Bunk Upda tes Bunk 17: T he Chicken F ingers Bunk 17, formally known as the Chicken Fingers, had a fantastic first week of camp. We were able to make a movie called “Million Dollar Hobo,” directed by Charlie, Robbie, and Connor. Lead actor Mitch played a homeless man on an epic quest to win a million dollars in a Ga-Ga tournament.

Also this week, Andres danced the cha-cha slide like no other.

Patrick and Edward were a force to be reckoned with during leagues, while Matt and Phil showed off perfect form in yoga.

We’re looking forward to starting another great week on Monday!

Bunk 18: Powerpuff Girls The Powerpuff Girls are off to a magical and powerful start. This week the Bunk 18 girls were excited to work on our Black Rocket video starring Victoria, Ella, Morgan, Rebecca, Jolie, Ellie, Christina, Emma, Elizabeth, and Lily. We’re sure it will be a hit!

The girls showed off their athletic ability during leagues this week, and our very own Christina Tamchin made the first bull’s-eye of the summer at archery. Nice job!

We had a great first week, and we can honestly say that our Powerpuff Girls are made of sugar, spice and everything nice!

Bunk Photos are now online and available to download!

Birthdays T his Month July 3rd: Christine Rosato

July 11th: Robert Bellina

July 4th: Joshua Monto

July 13th: Connor Udoff

July 5th: Lindsay Frucci

July 15th: Alexander Cohen

Benjamin Sturman July 21st: Kira Bringemeier July 7th: Emma Cullen Mary Young

July 26th: Eleanor Lee

July 8th: Julia Spinelli

July 27th: Rebecca Fernandez July 29th: Carter Klein July 30th: Emma Torkelson

Week 1: 6/24/13

Mark Your Calendar Dates to r! e b m e m e R

Week 2: 7/1/13

(Camp closed July 4th)

Week 3: 7/8/13

Week 4: 7/15/13

Week 5: 7/22/13 Week 6: 7/29/13 Week 7: 8/5/13

Week 8: 8/12/13

Program News Swimming

Campers enjoyed instructional and free swim each day this week. Some of our younger campers even took a break from the heat on our splash pad. We’re also excited to announce the newest addition to our swimming facilities: an aquatic rock climbing wall! All week our campers tried out their climbing skills on this safe and fun installation.

Yoga and Tennis with Marc

This summer we have a beautiful floor space dedicated to yoga. Campers practiced various breathing exercises to boost energy or relax an active mind! Next, we practiced poses like the mountain, timber, the bench and the ever-popular child pose. My motto is to always balance self-awareness with self-acceptance.

In tennis, we stressed eye-hand coordination and bunk unity by playing a game where campers attempted to keep a single ball in play for as long as possible.

Program News Pottery

The first week of pottery classes have been a blast! Campers have had a great time expressing their creativity and learning the basics of clay sculpting and shaping. I’m looking forward to using the pottery wheels to create some great clay pots and vases for campers to take home in the coming weeks. It’s been an awesome week and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the summer has in store!

Archery

In archery this week, I began each session by explaining all the safety rules for the range. After that, the campers competed to see who could score the highest using only five arrows. Next, we played a version of blackjack. In this game, there are two teams and each camper gets to shoot one arrow. The goal is to get as close as possible to a score of 25. The campers definitely improved their skills over the week and there were even a couple of bull’s-eyes.

Nature

This week at nature, I introduced the campers to the many animals that will be spending the summer here at camp. Campers had the opportunity to pet hamsters, snakes, chinchillas and bugs. We also walked our camp goats, Mocha and Caramel!

Lower bunk campers made nature scenes and went wading in the Peapack Brook in search of fish and salamanders. The upper bunk campers learned all about echolocation and played a game called Bats and Moths!

Program News Arts and Crafts with Johnny

Johnny here! This is going to be my second summer here at Hi-Hills and I can’t wait to get creative with the campers! This summer the students will get Art Stars for cleaning up and being the awesome campers we know they can all be.

So far bunks are getting five stars! This week’s art projects were inspired by the robot invasion theme and the campers were making 3D robots out of Styrofoam and white boxes. We had so much fun making our tiny little robot friends and gluing different materials onto them to make them fun.

Music with Stefanie

This week in music we talked about movie music and the musical score. We listened to music from the “Wall-E” and “Transformers” movies. After listening to a few songs from each film, campers split up into groups to come up with a skit or dance set to a song of their choice. After, they performed their skit for their fellow campers! We had some awesome fight scenes from Bunk 11 and Bunk 12 set to “The Transformers” music. What a fantastic first week at Hi-Hills!

Martial Arts

Campers had a blast this week learning how to punch and perform a proper front snap kick. We used these techniques in a partnered ball toss activity where campers had to act quickly and knock a ball out of the air. We also held some relay races to increase speed. At the end of each course they used their speed and strength to punch or kick a martial arts target. Counselors and CITs all joined in to increase the competition and test out their own skills.

g n i m o c Up ays D s s e r D

July 5th Red, White & Blue

Weekly Featured Recipe:

s c i t e l h t A Corner

From Dan

Pita Bread Pizza 1 Pita Bread 2 Tbsp Marinara Sauce 1/2 cup Mozzarella Cheese Turkey Pepperoni 1. Spread sauce on pita bread 2. Sprinkle on desired amount of cheese and pepperoni 3. Place on a baking sheet and bake in the oven at 400 degrees for 15 minutes

Greetings from Kinder Camp Kinder Camp got off to a great start this past week!

We enjoyed getting to know all the children; each one of them is wonderful! They all had a fantastic time swimming in the pool, but all our extra activities have been so much fun. The children are so interested in everything here at camp. We love to see their little faces light up each time they see something new!

The 2013 athletics season at Hi-Hills is off to a sensational start. For Week #1 we incorporated the Mad Science theme by playing some intense games of Monkey Ball with the upper bunks.

Meanwhile, our friends in Kinder Camp proved to be masters of the Skillastics and fitness dice activities that challenged both their academic and their physical skills. They also took part in an obstacle course consisting of the always-daunting mini-hurdles and agility ladder.

Next week will be the exciting debut of a new sport here at Hi-Hills: All-Volley Tennis, which combines volleyball and tennis. It’s been great to see everybody back at camp and we’re looking forward to the next 7 weeks!

ia v i r T y l k Wee Winners

Tuesday – Blake Bertoli, Tori Ackbert Wednesday – Cambpell Abbot, Matt Messina T hursday – Jake D’Alenso, Olivia Soultanian Friday – Austin Carey, Rebecca Fernandez

rs in Counselo Training

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Special Events!

Teen Travel

Teen travel went on some great trips on our first week here at camp. We headed down to Point Pleasant to spend some time on the beach and explore Jenkinson’s Boardwalk. The ocean was cold, but we all had a blast anyway. We also took a trip to the movies to see the summer blockbuster “Man of Steel”.

Our campers gave the film rave reviews.

Some even said it was as good as the new Batman films. We’re all looking forward to going on more exciting trips next week!

This week at camp our Friday dress-up theme was robot invasion! Campers of all ages took part in the fun, and every camper who dressed up won an awesome prize at our morning meeting. All the costumes were great, and we’re looking forward to seeing what our campers come up with for next week’s Red, White and Blue theme.