With the school year starting a week earlier than last year, summer camps may fill up sooner.
The Vero Beach Museum of Art’s summer camp is offering one less weeklong session but still expects 700 kids to sign up this summer. In the past three years, the schedule has dropped from nine weeks to only seven.
This year, the museum has a particularly kid-friendly exhibit in the main gallery: NASA is lending 71 examples of space-themed art that it’s been collecting since 1962.
Opening the last week of June and running through most of September, the show is inspiring much of the camp curriculum in those weeks, with themes like “Around the Galaxy” and “Time Warp” to inspire the kids’ art projects.
Other sessions involve nature themes, including the Everglades and the Indian River Lagoon. Another session, “Holy Macro,” involves looking at the smaller things in nature, like bugs and the veins of leaves.
The last week’s session merges art and architecture, with kids creating structures out of clay and toothpicks.
“I have my daughter here every day,” says Sophie Bentham Wood, director of media relations for the museum. “I go into my office and I say, ‘She’s all yours.’ She thinks it’s the coolest thing ever.”
This year, the art camp is bringing back traditional art instruction in what are dubbed “Master Classes for Junior Artists.” Those classes will focus on the techniques of painting, pottery and drawing.
The museum’s summer camp is for children ages 4 to 16. It is divided into one-week morning or afternoon sessions beginning June 15 and going through July 29. Some need-based scholarships are available. With extended hours in the morning and afternoon and an optional lunch provided, the camp can serve as an 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. day-care option for working parents.
The price of a week of half-day sessions is $100 with the exception of the Pottery class, which is $200.
There is a 20 percent discount for museum members. To register online, go to verobeachmuseum.org.
Meanwhile, a few hundred feet away in Riverside Park, Riverside Children’s Theatre is welcoming a new director of education, Jim Van Valen. He’ll be arriving in early June, just in time for the swarms of kids at its annual summer camp that starts June 6.
Riverside has staggered start dates depending on the program. This year, the annual Rascals Revue features music from the 1980s, and a new Rascals for younger kids is being launched this year.
The Disney kids’ musical will be “Aladdin Jr.” And the recently added intensive program for older kids focusing on concert performance features “13 the Musical,” the show that launched pop star Ariana Grande.
There’s a session involving reader’s theater with a goal of helping young actors in training focus on delivery and character without the help of sets and costumes.
For children age 4 to 6, there are weekly morning sessions based on familiar fairy tales and kids’ movies.
And for the tiniest kids, age 3 to 4, there are three-day morning mini-sessions of singing and storytelling.
An enrollment form and scholarship application is available on Riverside’s website under Youth Classes and Camps, at riversidetheatre.com.
Wood says the two organizations have been in discussion on how to best serve their shared pool of students.
Last month, the museum offered the theater a table to promote their camp at the Children’s Art Festival. And Riverside apprentice actors staged the theater’s original musical “Poodleful” at the museum’s Children’s Art Festival. “They packed the house,” Wood says.
“We’re in conversation about how we can swap out with Riverside, and better crisscross,” says Wood. “We know we both have kids that are interested in cultural arts, so we’re in conversation about how we can maximize that.”
