The Grand Street Kids Club is a free summer camp for inner-city youth ages 4-12. The purpose of the program is to expose youth to a variety of artistic expressions in a setting with other youth their age. Children have the opportunity to do many things: arts and crafts, dancing, singing, field trips to historical places, theaters, and parks, including the swimming pool at Lincoln Park. We invite local artists from the Albany region to volunteer their artistic talents with the children, exposing children to a variety of artistic mediums and measures.

The Grand Street Kids Club is directed by talented, passionate, and skilled people who take interest in the success of our inner-city youth. The program runs every summer for five weeks, July – August, from 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM on weekdays. Breakfast and lunch are included. It costs nothing for your child to attend, however to offset costs we ask for a $20.00 suggested weekly donation.

Program Dates and Details

Monday, July 11th – Friday, August 12, 2011

Cost: FREE

Location: Grand Street Community Arts Center, 68 Grand Street, Albany, NY

GSKC 2011 Registration Packet

Program Directors

Karece Powers, karece@grandarts.org

A Typical Day at the GSCA Kid’s Club

After breakfast, the kids at GSKC start out by drawing or writing in their hand made journals. This introspection allows personal time for themselves while quietly talking amongst themselves. They often beam proud smiles and eagerly show off their great works of art.

Story time winds in next. Books are read aloud in small groups by teens or the older readers can go off and read to themselves.

Team games are played and awesome art projects are created by staff, teens or a visiting volunteer artist. Today they made lemon balm scented hand cream with the various, natural provisions supplied by a generous parent. Hand etched prints cut from foam trays, long and slinky snakes strung on toilet paper rolls and terrariums growing in glass jars to name a few projects. Today a talent show revealed amazing and wondrous feats of acrobats, dances and songs from the littlest child to the oldest. These are some of the daily adventures at GSKC that inspire joy, courage, autonomy, friendship and creativity.

To top the day off, after lunch, the kids hike off to the beautiful aqua pool at Lincoln Park for a cool swim. You can bet they all remember their bathing suits! Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.

Kids Club Updates Summer 2011

CHECK OUT MORE PICTURES OF GSKC SUMMER 2011 ON FLICKR

First Week

Well here we our back for another summer of fun in the sun and of course arts. The first week is coming to a close and the children are on the move! From daily treks to Lincoln Park to the local field trips to other parks in Albany’s South End neighborhood, the kids certainly have their hands full with all of the planned activities.

This year every Tuesday and Thursday participants in Kids Club break into small groups and work with staff on their end of the year production. We have a new staff member this year teaching the kids some very cool theater material. We are excited to see what they come up with!

Decorating sidewalks with chalk and building imaginary fairy playhouses, the children have been active and it’s only the first week! Take a look at what they have been up to.

Second Week

We’re already at the end of week two, time is moving fast and so are the kids. This week we had a visitor from cartoonist Joseph the children learned how to draw their favorite action heroes and were even left with an amazing drawing of Captain America.

While the older kids were learning how to sketch, their younger counterparts were on an adventure at the state museum. Learning about Mastodons, Woolly mammoths and even digging for fossils.

With the help of our summer workers the kids created some great looking artwork, including a painting of a tree decorated with all of their handprints, it is now on display at the community center. There is also a paper quilt of all of their drawings being created, I’m sure it will turn out wonderful. Be sure to check out the photos below and enjoy the student’s artwork.

This week in theatre news our under age six crew participated much more in the theater class. We practiced the Bear Song and Liz taught us my personal favorite “Boom Chic a Boom.” The campers in this class really work well with call and response songs. This is a great chant for the children it warms up their voices and gets them moving. Next we will add the movements to go along with the Bear Song and we’ll have a show!  Lookout for some tiny bear cubs near you very soon!

Looks like the older kids are putting on a production of the classic book “Caps for Sale.” Our AmeriCorps volunteer Amanda Susnjara is planning a fantastic show with props and an awesome stage set that is sure to bring the play to life.

As we wrap up the second week it’s great to see the children getting along, making new friends, and getting excited about our end of the summer camp production. Hope to see you there!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Third Week

The third week of Kids Camp has come to a close only two more weeks left of our adventure! Cartoonist Joseph Woods visited us again, this time teaching the children how to draw still life portraits. We have some talented artists in this group the pictures were amazing!

Don’t forget about our end of summer camp production, the kids are working very hard on their shows and would love your support.

Musician Deb Cavanaugh paid us a visit and brought along instruments. All the children had an opportunity to try either the banjo, dulcimer, or mandolin and they loved it, here are a few pictures of them trying out their musical talents.

Don’t forget August 12 is the big day, be sure to stop by and see our thespians at work!