If you are beat because you had the kids home with nothing to do over winter break, you are going to want to check out the Mini-Camps that Edmonds has to offer for the non-student days sneaking up on us. Now there are more days off than what I am listing, but they are holidays, etc. These are the Professional Development Days, all Fridays and the next one is Jan. 24. After that the dates are: Feb. 7, March 21, April 25, and May 16.
There will be Discovery Mini-Camps on Jan. 24, Feb. 19 and April 25 for kids ages 6 to 12. These classes are led by Discover Program Ranger-Naturalists and offer “hands-on fun with science and nature.” We have done a lot of the Ranger led camps and each time is better than the last. These Mini-Camps run from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., which is great because the kids eat lunch there and come home tired!
When I called Edmonds Parks and Rec to book our Spring Break camp (Spring Break starts April 7), Debbie told me about a new Clay Mini-Camp. The four-hour program is offered Feb. 7 and March 31 for kids ages 8 to 12. Per The Craze, kids can “Stretch the imagination and enhance problem solving skills while exploring the possibilities of clay! Spend the morning creating and the afternoon fine tuning and adding color. Projects fired outside of camp and available for pick up after two weeks.” Debbie, who is really the gatekeeper at Edmonds Parks and Rec, sounded very excited about this new camp and she is batting 1000 at recommendations for us.
There are also some weekly classes coming up! Art Start, for kids ages 4 to 6, starts Friday, Jan. 10. This is perfect if your kid goes to preschool Monday through Thursday. The classes, which are drop off, run Fridays from 10 to 11:30. Each session provides different projects as kids “learn basic art techniques such as collage, painting, mixed media, sculpture and more.”
Another new offering is Preschool Art Exploration for kids ages 3.5 to 5 on Wednesdays from 1 to 1:45 p.m. Kids can “enhance observation skills, cooperative social interaction and learn basic art concepts such as color, shape, line and texture. Parent participation is optional if your child is potty trained.” This is the perfect kind of class if your kid is headed to preschool soon or a 5-day a week preschool is out of the budget. We started slowly like this with my second son. He took the opportunity to ignore circle time and kiss girls, but I was happy he was able to gradually work toward sitting criss-cross applesauce.
You have likely seen fliers come home with your kids about sports or Boy Scouts. The Edmonds School District gives “the opportunity for nonprofits in our community to distribute information to students through our schools.” I learned via an email from my oldest son’s school, an email I actually read all the way to the bottom, that the district has a page that includes all of these links. If you need to replace a flier or want to see what is being offered you can visit the Community eFliers page.
Jen Marx, an Edmonds Mom of two young boys, is a traffic reporter by dawn and writer and PBJ maker by day. She is always looking for a fun place to take the kids that makes them tired enough to go to bed on time. You can contact Jen with your local event at email@example.com or find her trying to make sense of begging kids to ” just eat the mac n cheese” at SnackMomSyndrome.com. If you have a kid-friendly event you’d like to share, email her at firstname.lastname@example.org.