Alana is current 5th grader, and a new Upper Inter Girl!
Meet Alana: She lives in Armonk, NY and is a current 5th grader who will be joining us at Camp Canadensis for her first year as an Upper Inter Girl! I had such a great time getting to know her, she’s so sweet and was whirling and twirling during our home visit, so she will no doubt be busting a move at Morning Line Up every day this summer! Here’s what you should know about this great new camper:
-She’s been flipping and dancing from a really young age, and has earned the nick name “upside down Alana”!
-She loves to dance! She really good at it, and dances five days a week. She takes lyrical, ballet, hip-hop and jazz.
-She’s doing a lyrical solo this year, and lyrical is her most favorite type of dance. Her dance competition team has competed in front of hundreds of people and travels to places like Boston for competitions!
-She use to live on a lake, so she’s tried a lot of lake activities, but she cannot wait to waterski at camp!
-She goes to gymnastics on the weekend (she’s working on getting her back handspring back!), and will want to do cheerleading for one of her electives.
-She loves to eat salad lunch and will convince her bunk to go to the salad bar with her. She’s excited that we serve Chicken Caesar Salad at camp!
-At camp this summer we’ll be teaching her a lot of new sports, and she’ll be teaching her bunk a lot of awesome and funny nontraditional “high fives”!
Alex is a current 4th grader, and a new Lower Inter Girl!
Meet Alex: She lives in Irvington, NY and is a current 4th grader who will be joining us at Canadensis for her first summer as a Lower Inter Girl! She loves to follow in her father’s footsteps…that’s part of the reason why she loves to play soccer and is learning to play trumpet. Her father went to Camp Canadensis too, and now it’s her turn! Here’s what you should know about this well rounded new camper:
-She plays soccer for two seasons a year on Team Blaze – her dad is the coach!
-At day camp last year she audition for the play and was offered the lead as Belle in “Beauty and the Beast”, but she turned it down to you play Lumiere! It was her first time being in a show, and she loved it!
-She plays golf, takes tennis lessons, and likes all sports including basketball.
-She’s not afraid to play soccer with the boys, once they see how many goals she scores, they all want to pass to her!
-She broke her leg skiing last year, and got back up and skis recently.
-At camp, she’s excited to learn how to waterski and do things up in the arts and crafts center, she especially can’t wait to make a pizza plate in glass fusion!
-She loves the color blue and likes all foods (except for broccoli). She remembers how great the camp chicken fingers are from her lunch tour last year!
Lila is a current 2nd grader, and a new Lower Junior Girl!
Meet Lila: She lives in Newtown, PA and is currently in 2nd grade, which means she’ll be a Lower Junior Girl for her first summer at camp! She is joining her big sister Misha at Canadensis this summer, but last year she actually got to spend the night at Canadensis during the Tour & More Weekend! Here’s what you should know about this fun new camper:
-Her day camp last summer use to do competitions during lunch, and she won the hula hooping contest!
-During the year, she plays tennis once a week, and wants to play more. She’s a winner on the court, and has won prizes (like candy!).
-She also goes to gymnastics once a week, and one of her favorite activities at Canadensis is the foam pit.
-She will probably spend her electives at tennis, lake recreations and the climbing wall.
-On tour two summers ago she visited the canteen and loves it in there, she’s excited to go three times a week!
-She usually stays up late, and wakes up early. She’s funny, loud and energetic, and hopes to have a lot of bunkmates who are the same way!
-At her day camp, she never won Color War…so hopefully we can snap her streak this year!
-She had recently gone to the Jingle Ball concert, and loved Ariana grande!
Jordyn is a current 2nd Grader, and a new Lower Junior Girl!
Meet Jordy: She lives in Newtown, PA and is a current 2nd grader. She will be a Lower Junior at camp this summer, and cannot wait for her first year! She is going to be 7 years old when camp starts, and will be celebrating her 8th birthday at camp. She’s already super excited to have the whole camp sing to her! Here’s what you should know about this sweet new camper:
-She loves to play soccer, and is on the “Leopards”, their uniforms are blue, but I bet she wishes they were purple, since that’s her favorite color!
-The night after I visited her, she was going to be up on stage performing in a play! It was an updated version of “Cinderella”, and sounded really cool.
-She loves to dance and sing, and will be working on a production of Mulan soon!
-She had a lot of great ceramics projects she had made around her house, she really loves art.
-She’s been having sleepovers since she was age 3! On some nights at home, her sister ends up sleeping in her room.
-She absolutely loves hamburgers, it’s one of her favorite foods!
-She goes to gymnastics once a week, and just got a balance beam for Hanukkah – she was showing me her tricks!
-At camp this summer, she wants to get better at tennis so she can be the tennis champion and her family. Her family has an air hockey table, and right now her big brother is the air hockey champ!
Jordyn is new to Canadensis, and her brother Andrew is currently in 3rd grade, and is returning as an Upper Junior Boy!
Speaking of her big brother, he’s coming back to camp for his second summer! Andrew is a current 3rd grader, and will be an Upper Junior Boy. He was a huge help during this home visit because he remembers EVERYTHING from last summer!! Here’s some good update from Andrew since camp:
-He used to wrestle during the winter, but he loved basketball so much at camp that he switched his sports! His basketball team is the “Chargers”.
-He’s an big Eagles, Phillies and Devils. He’s such a big Devils fan, he couldn’t bring himself to take the didn’t take the Flyers workshop at camp this summer!
-He was also in the Cinderella show, and played the Prince!
-He’s also super excited to have his sister celebrating a birthday at camp this summer. He’s planning to join her during the pizza party at dinner!
Jordyn is a current 2nd grader, and a new Lower Junior Girl!
Meet Jordyn: She’s from Maple Glen, PA and is a current 2nd grader, and will be a Lower Junior Girl at camp this summer. All you need to do is check out that giant smile (that’s missing a few teeth!) to know she is ready for camp. She told me she would start today if she could! Here’s what you need to know about this super active new camper:
-Her favorite color is blue, and one day she hopes to paint her room that color.
-She’s getting ready for camp, and recently got a lot of helpful things for Hanukkah, including an camp address book, camp towel, and sweet looking pillows and blankets covered with candy and ice cream cones!
-She really likes to play all sorts of sports! Including playing golf with her dad when it’s warm enough.
-She goes to gymnastics and takes hip-hop dance classes.
-This year she’s also going to be in a show for the first time. They are going to do a production of Annie!
-She takes tennis lessons and loves it, and is very excited about having so many tennis courts nearby all summer.
-At her old camp, she was a gaga champion! Our older campers better watch out because she’s been known to take down fifth-graders!
-She was a little bit nervous about going in the lake at first, but after we talked about it a little, she got really excited to try the water trampoline and everything!
Elias is a current 3rd grader, and a new Upper Junior Boy!
Meet Elias: He lives in Maple Glen, PA and is a currently 3rd grader. He will be an Upper Junior Boy at camp this summer and will be joining his older brother for the summer at Canadensis. Elias also has a younger brother, and he’s lucky to get to be both a big and little bro at the same time! I really appreciate that his family included me in lighting Hanukkah candles together, and I had fun getting to know Elias better. Here’s what you should know about this happy new camper:
-Without a doubt his favorite thing is wrestling! He’s participating in four sports right now, but wrestling what he looks forward to the most!
-He’s also training for baseball and soccer (he’s on a travel soccer team) and playing on a basketball team.
-We talked about some of his favorite day camp memories, including the special boat race and color run days. He plans to do our Zombie Run at camp this summer.
-When we go to Dorney Park, he wants to be in an Extreme group, so he can do lots of roller coasters and rides.
-He slept over at camp last summer for the Canadensis Tour & More Program, and his favorite thing was the banana boat in the lake.
-He “rocks at writing” and will be sending home some really great letters about the fun he’s having at camp!
-He tends to wake up early, so on Thursdays he will be the first one in line to change his electives!
-He’s got two dogs, named Cooper and Maggie. He loves to eat hotdogs (very different kind of dogs!)
-And, did I mention that he’s a really awesome wrestler? He’s definitely going to choose that as one of his electives, and will probably be able to teach the coach a thing or two!
Elias is joining his older brother at Canadensis, Griffin is a current 6th grader, and will be a Freshman Boy this summer!
Here’s a photo of me with Elias and both his brothers. It was awesome catching up with Griffin during the home visit and hearing all about what he’s been doing since camp. He’s a current 6th grader, and will be moving up to Freshman Hill this summer. Here’s a few updates from Griff:
-He’s playing basketball and training for baseball right now.
-He’s been filling his brother in on all the things he should know before his first summer. When I came over, they were starting to watch the Yearbook DVD!
-He’s really excited about the perks of being a Freshman. Things like double electives, getting to opt out of the overnight, choosing cooking as an elective, and going on the overnight trip to Cooperstown. (Even though he’s going to go twice in the same summer since he has a baseball tournament there!).
Check out that gigantic cookie! Having fun with the Plant Family!
I love seeing our campers! A few weeks ago, I got to hang out with Jordan, a current 6th grader who will be a Freshman Girl at camp this summer, and will be getting her 5 year jacket! She was in town visiting several camp friends, and I got to spend some time with her and her parents!
Jordan (left) was visiting friends in Philadelphia, and I met up with her and Rachel (middle) right before Rachel went to Nutcracker practice!
One of her sleepovers was with her bunkmate Rachel, and we all got to spend a little time together in Philadelphia before Rachel went to ballet practice. But, not just any ballet practice…Rachel had to practice with the Pennsylvania Ballet for the production of the Nutcracker, where she was starring as Marie…the lead! It such a dream come true, and a major role! It takes tons of practice and rehearsal, plus dedication. She has a lot of performances to do at the Academy of Music, which seats more than 2,500 people!
At the show with Jordan and Jordyn
A few weeks later, the curtain went up on The Nutcracker, and I went with some of Rachel’s camp friends to support her! Here I am with Jordan, and Jordyn (who is also going to be a Freshman Girl this summer, but is in a different bunk in the division). We were all SO impressed. Rachel was incredible on stage – just phenomenal!!! All her hard work is paying off, and if you are in Philly this holiday season, it’s not too late to get tickets to see her on stage!
We love seeing holiday cards from our camp families!
We love when our camp families include us on the mailing list, and send us their holiday cards. We get so excited to open the envelopes and pass them around so everyone can see! We also love when we spot camp photos or camp gear that makes it onto the holiday card, but this year was the first time we were a “trivia” answer on a holiday card! This super creative personalized family word search comes from Aidan (Lower Inter Boy) and Brooke (Freshman Girl) and their fun loving family! The question for 11 Across said: “Brooke and Aidan go to this overnight camp”, and the answer of course is CANADENSIS!
And since this will be my last blog of 2014, I wanted to share one last thing I’m very excited about! Amy Spielberger has been a Canadensis Mom for several years, her children Ruby and Drew will both be back at camp this summer. This year mom is coming with them, and joining us on the Programming Team at camp! She’s grown up at sleepaway camp, met her husband at camp, and has served as a JCC Day Camp Director. Her hard working and detail oriented approach to camp will be a huge asset to our program this year. Our Program Director Lauren Schwed and I can’t wait to have her on our team!
