Orientation Letter - 1

 Welcome to Summerland Music Camp!

We are so happy that you are joining us at camp this year! We are going to have such a great time and become supremely musical by the end of our week together.

 

Here are some things to know about Music Camp:

 

Our venue:

St Stephen’s Anglican Church (note: this is a change from previous years)

9311 Prairie Valley Rd

Summerland BC V0H 1Z7 

Contact cell (during camp time only): 250-494-9887

Linnea’s home number (for urgencies the rest of the day) 250-494-5111

 

Our time every day:

8:30-12:30 (please come a few minutes early but no earlier than 8:15)

Monday to Friday July 3-7/23

 

Friday - our last day

Performance: We will present our musical offerings on Friday at 11:30am-12:30pm - AT SUMMERLAND UNITED CHURCH ON HENRY @ MAIN. Please invite friends and family to join us for this performance.

Potluck Lunch: Following our performance, let’s eat lunch together. Bring a potluck contribution. We’ll put a sign-up sheet up on the wall for you. 

 

Who we are:

Our leaders are Linnea Good: Coordinator, song leader and ukulele teacher; Betty Ann Xenis: co-Coordinator and Arts Instructor; and our special guest, international performer and Bollywood Dance teacher Karima Essa.

We have adult volunteers joining us to help with logistics, kid support, security, buddying, etc.

We have youth leaders (high school students) who will take on logistical and leadership roles.

We have jr leaders - participants aged 12 who will act as buddies to children who could use support and be first assistant to workshop leaders.

 

What to bring:

* a bottle of water

* t-shirt and shorts, non-dress-up clothes

* comfortable runners (needed for dancing)

* your own ukulele, if you happen to have one

 

What not to bring:

* Snacks - We will ask families to donate fruits and vegetables to our Snack Coordinator, David Jonsson, and his team. We would very much appreciate your not sending other food along with your child, except in the case of a health condition whose information you have shared with us.

* Electronics - While we love our handhelds too, we find that their presence can divert us from the fun stuff we are doing in the group. We can take care of devices and give them back at the end of the morning, if that is helpful.

 

Donations

Send a Kid to Camp! - welcome donations to help families get their kids to us!

We will have a sign-up sheet for fruit, vegetables and cheese

 

Volunteer with us! We are looking for:

Ukulele Buddies: get one-on-one with campers learning new chords with new fingers. 

Snack Patrol: Chef David could use an assistant in the kitchen, preparing the veg, fruit and cheese that people have brought for snack time

Adult Support all mornings: We have found it more effective to have adults volunteer for all 5 mornings of the week, rather than to drop in. If you have these  mornings free, we guarantee you a very uplifting experience of service supporting musical enrichment for the children. 

Volunteers, please go get your criminal record check done now.

 

Have you paid?

Thank-you to those who paid by visa, paypal, e-transfer, drop-off at the church or who mailed in their cheque. Remember that your registration is not confirmed until you have paid or made an arrangement with our office.

 

Are you waiting to hear about a possible bursary?

Have you applied for financial assistance? We will be making bursary decisions up until a week before camp begins, so apply if you need to. Click here:

Receive Bursary Assistance

 

Drives from & to Penticton

We will be calling families to connect up people who may be wishing to share drives. Please let us know if you are interested in taking part.

 

Set up, Prep and Needs

Consider joining us at St Stephen’s Anglican on Sunday afternoon, July 2, 1pm onward to set up tables, put up decorations (bring some!) and get the place ready for a slam of music-makers. There might be pizza involved...

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Know someone who should sign up?

(maybe even someone who has not considered it because they don’t have the cash). Please encourage them to come (and to apply for the bursary if they need it):

Register for Summerland Music Camp

 

Who is supporting this event?

ArtSpirit Summerland Studio is the host of this event. Summerland Music Camp is an entirely non-religious event, and is the grateful recipient of sponsorships from both Summerland United Church (and the UCC Pro-Vision fund) and St Stephen’s Anglican Church. It has also received support from the Mary Stuart van Mater foundation and has benefitted from the Paul Rodgers/Cynthia Kereluk fund. 

 

What are we hoping to accomplish?

We believe that music will make us happy for the rest of their lives. It will help our brains grow smarter, our self-confidence taller, our hearts wiser, our social interactions more fluent, our friendships deeper, and our families and community more cohesive. Also it rocks! And we will rock.

 

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Orientation Letter - 2

You should see us..! We are in high gear, getting ready to

welcome you on Monday morning at SMC 2023. 

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Karima Essa (our bollywood dance teacher)

is making plans to come up to the Okanagan Valley

after she performs FOUR times on Canada Day,

down on the coast.

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Ms Betty Ann (our art instructor) is gathering up all the art and craft supplies her arms and car can hold, preparing big tables where you will be creative.

Ms Linnea (our ukulele teacher) has been down at the Sunday Market encouraging children to come to camp, and playing new songs all week for you to sing and play. 

 

Our Youth Leadership Team has met and begun plans for the Blanket Groups you will belong to. You are going to love your leaders!!

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Mr David, the Head Chef, is Ready-Set to Go, to chop up fruit, vegetable and cheese snacks for our mid-morning break. 

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1) The Youth and Adult leadership team will be setting up on Sunday afternoon at 1pm at St Stephen’s Anglican Church. We would love it if you decided to join us. We are decorating, setting up tables, making signs and putting up our sound system and such. Your assistance would be most welcome (and it’s a cool way for children to meet the leaders, if anybody is feeling a little apprehensive about their first day of day camp).

 

2) My Administrator Brenda, who is irreplaceable, is not well at this time, and we are aware that there are tasks that she does that will be difficult to cover by our programme leaders during the week. These are largely first thing in the morning: inviting people to sign up to bring a snack one day, pointing out the silent auction of the donated ukulele, reminding people that there is a sign-up sheet for the potluck lunch on Friday (for the whole family after our closing concert celebration), making sure fees have all been paid and accounted for, and generally being available when someone needs something. We wonder if there might be some adults willing to join us in helping cover one or more of these roles? 

 

3) We need 3 camp families to sign up to bring a snack for us on Monday morning (fruit, vegetable or cheese only, please). Who will be the first? Email me now.

 

4) Registration numbers are a bit below our original budgeting, so we would love it if you contacted a couple of friend-families and encouraged them to register their children for camp. We have the genders and the ages covered, so no fear of being on your own.  https://www.artspiritsummerland.com/summerland-music-camp

 

4) Have you paid your camp fees? If not yet, you can e-transfer Linnea Good at this email address. 

 

5) On camp mornings, we will require that children be brought in by an adult, who initial the child’s leader’s sign-in attendance page. Likewise when picking children up at the end of the morning.

 

6) We will ask you to sign a waiver for your child’s participation in camp, when we meet on Monday morning. This will also ask if we can share their photo image in social media to let people know about Summerland Music Camp (which is so helpful for us, as we have no photos from the past 3 years). Options: a) Yes  b) Yes, without name  c) I’ll talk to the Leader  d) No. 

 

7) There will be a dupatta (Indian) scarf for every child – your choice of colour! 

 

8) And did I say there would be a silent auction on the Ukulele donated to Summerland Music Camp? Highest bid at 12:15pm on Friday takes the instrument home.

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Orientation Letter - 3

Greetings from your leadership team!

You see Betty Ann up there at “11 o’clock”.

Beside her on the iPad is Zinhle in Calgary,

Esme, Aubrey, Brynn, Allison, Dahlia at

“7 o’clock” and Axton beside her.

I am behind the camera smiling at how gifted

this leadership group is.

 

We’ve thought of a couple of things:

 

Cameras are on my mind

Do you have time to drop in and take action photos sometime this week? We would ask you to put them up on a google drive or other such storage so we have access to them. They are so exciting – and we leaders tend to be too busy to take the photos. We have a tradition of creating a photo montage at the end of Music Camp each year. Drop me a line, if you can.

 

Parking

When you come, we will ask you to accompany your children right to the front door of the church (on Prairie Valley Rd) to drop them off and sign them in. So you will need to park behind the church. If you are coming down the hill toward the round-about at St Stephen’s corner, this is easily accessible. However, if you are coming from other points, you might actually find it easier (and more legal) to drive along Wharton and turn south onto Kelly Ave between Memorial Park and the new condo building. This will swing you around onto Brown St, where you will end at Prairie Valley Rd. Turn left there onto PVR, making an immediate right turn into the parking lot as you approach the roundabout (again).

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Signing Your Child(ren) in

We do require that an adult bring the child/ren in to camp and pick them up, initialling each time, for all our peace of mind. If you plan to have a friend pick your child up one day, please tell their youth leader (who will greet you when you arrive) about this.

 

Parent Support

Thanks to a couple of adults for offering to help us out this week! We could use one more to help first thing Monday morning as children choose their dupatta scarf (and need to mark it with their name on masking tape). This is a colourful job! Who wants it? 

 

Snacks

Please sign up for a day to bring fruit, vegetable or unprocessed cheese for our snack one day this week (one day per child). Chef Dave suggests: something along the lines of 4 apples or a bin of strawberries, 1 pkg cheese, a bunch of carrots, or a small watermelon.

 

One More Time About Allergies

Just doing a second check to hear if there are food sensitivities we should know about. 

 

Ukulele Silent Auction

Thanks to 2 donors, we have a soprano uke and a concert uke (the next size up) for you to bid on for your musician. Thanks to Michael Whitney, of Whitney Guitars  here in Summerland, for refurbishing the concert ukulele so it is in tip-top condition. Go nuts with the bidding, folks; all proceeds go to the SMC Send-a-Kid-to-Camp Bursary fund! The highest bidder takes it away at our potluck lunch on Friday.

 

As I’ve said before, this camp is extraordinary and we are beyond excited to meet your children. Please find my post on Facebook and share it, and approach one family about coming to camp next week. We are holding off making up the final registration list until we’ve given the world one more chance to sign on. 🥰

 

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Orientation Letter - 4

Be sure to label what you bring to camp – such as water bottles, clothes, your own uke (if you have one to bring), etc.

 

When you are contributing a snack this week, please bring it to the round umbrella table outside the front door.

 

I (Ms Linnea) will be at the Sunday Market tomorrow; feel free to come on over and say hi, like Nicole K did last week! Look for the Ukulele Petting Zoo.

 

Ms Betty Ann sends this Art Heads-up:

Wear comfortable clothes you can get messy in!

 

We are using a lot of “found” materials for our art projects, so here are some items you can bring for certain days.  It is not required, but if you can collect some of this, it would be helpful!

 

Monday

long fabric scraps - roughly 3” wide by 24” long.  The sizes can vary but this gives you an idea.  Any colour or fabric, but colourful is better!

 

Tuesday 

Nature supplies:  leaves, flowers, small rocks, small stems, twigs, pine cones, etc. 

 

Wednesday

Sturdy stick (1/2”  to 1” in diameters) either straight or forked, approximately 12- 18” long.

 

Thursday

Small fabric scraps

 

Friday

a bag to take home art projects in!

I’m looking forward to creating with your children!  - Betty-Ann Xenis

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