LifeMoves ACES Summer Adventure Camp

For the first field trip of the summer, LifeMoves Summer Adventure Campers and Counselors visited the San Francisco Zoo! Once we all arrived, a zoo employee began to talk to the kids about the fascinating animals they would potentially be encountering in the zoo. The campers were jumping with excitement and enthusiasm in their eyes, eager to see all the animals in the zoo before the trip was over. 

Our adventurous campers began to explore the map to determine which exhibit to visit first, when one of the campers spotted a zebra and a giraffe standing tall across the field. The campers were not sure where the giraffe was so one of the counselors pointed out it was next to the tree, eating some leaves from the acacia tree. With delight, a camper shouted, “I can’t wait to see the gorillas next!”

As we began to approach the mighty grizzly bear, the children stopped to take pictures with some of the backdrops the SF Zoo offers to visitors to take selfies or photographs, which include antlers, peacock feathers, and butterfly wings.

One of the camp counselors said, “I can’t wait to see the penguins!” The penguins’ exhibit had adorable penguins swimming and relaxing next to their homes. The lions and tigers were asleep, but the campers were still able to gaze at them from afar.

As our zoo-per day was coming to an end, we still had some spare time to see our creepy crawler buddies – the insects. The kids were amazed to see so many different types of insects, including spiders, scorpions, cockroaches, centipedes, red ants, and more.

Overall, the campers left the zoo happy but exhausted, excited to visit again and were happy to have see some of their favorite animals.

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Yesterday was the first day of LifeMoves 2019 Summer Adventure Camp! We first met some of our enthusiastic campers through fun naming activities like the “quack game.” The “quack game” is simple to play: if the person in the middle of the circle calls your name, you duck down while the people next to the person that ducked down make a quacking sound to each other. The person that says quack too slowly or forgets to say quack then comes to the middle of the circle and the cycle repeats itself.

After, our campers enjoyed a delicious snack before they began demonstrating their fantastic art skills to the rest of the camp counselors. The campers started to draw self-portraits, rainbows with gardens that had huge trees, and coloring in clown drawing which they got from a coloring book.

Simultaneously, another counselor was enjoying a game of dodge ball with some of our energetic campers. The campers ran around, laughing and sharing the dodge balls, which they would pick up with each other to make sure everyone felt included. Uniquely this game was exciting for our campers because even if they were not able to dodge on time, they would continue to be part of the game since there were no outs.