The final camp of the summer brought to you by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department was called ‘It’s A Mad Mad World’ Camp offered at Jacob Myers Park from Monday, July 29 through Friday, Aug. 2. The camp ran from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.
The week long camp was the last hoorah before the 2013-2014 school year, which begins today, Aug. 7. Riverbank Parks and Recreation officials said they created this final camp to include a little bit of everything that they have done all summer long. The camp offered a combination of nature, science and art for youngsters between the ages of 6- to 12-years-old.
Program specialist Joye Thompson and camp leader Edgar Fernandez tried to keep the week filled with a somewhat odd assortment of activities to keep with the camp title for the 13 campers that participated.
Some of the artistic activities they did at camp were making snake key chains and another day they made Hawaiian picture frames out of felt.
“We made Christmas ornaments in August,” said Thompson. “That’s how crazy we want the camp to be because it’s a ‘Mad Mad World’ camp.”
Fernandez had all the campers enticed with building a balloon powered car. The car was made out of an egg carton and a few other household items. The youngster’s faces lit up as soon as they saw the car take off as the balloon on the back deflated.
One of the other activities was creating a glow in the dark liquid using Mountain Dew soda and Mentos candies. The idea was to drop the candy into the soda and the combination of the two would cause the liquid to glow in the dark.
Fernandez and the campers tested the experiment and when they took the soda bottle into the dark storage room, it failed. No glow.
Besides everyone wanting to drink the Mountain Dew and the experiment being a failure, the campers seemed to enjoy the excitement.
The weather was mild, especially for late July-early August throughout the week of camp so all the campers really enjoyed the outdoors by playing a friendly game of softball and hanging out in the playground area of Jacob Myers Park.
The ‘wrap’ of the camps with the madcap finale closed out a highly successful summer program for the city and its young residents.
