Camp LEAP IN

Camp LEAP In is designed to include many children who may not be able to attend traditional camps. This camp will provide a sensory rich environment that encourages the development of sensory processing skills, language, motor, and social skills. Our goal is to give children an opportunity to enrich these skills through play and movement while engrossed in nature.

Five Focus Areas

• Sensory: We will work to integrate the senses (tactile, vestibular, proprioception, olfactory, vision, auditory and taste) in natural ways through imaginative play schemes.  We will be walking on logs as balance beams, splashing, jumping and digging in mud puddles, swinging with the wind blowing in our faces, jumping off stumps, rolling down grassy hills, walking over crunchy leaves and building forts with sticks and wood. Your child will have the opportunity to seek out what their body needs and direct this to be in the optimal state to participate in other activities. The environment will be equipped with a variety of tools to facilitate all of the senses such as hammocks, swings, tents, slack lines, and alternative seating. Nature in and of itself is the best sensory playground!
• Gross Motor: Immersion in nature will focus on the development of large muscle coordination, core strength, the body awareness needed to motor plan and problem solve, build an obstacle course and other play-based activities.
• Fine and Perceptual Motor Activities: We will use our tactile and touch systems, and with our own two hands build and construct cool things. We will facilitate the development of mature patterns by grasping tools to complete nature art and picking up and manipulating multi-sensory materials a variety of shapes and sizes. We work on developing the right amount of force needed to work with items in nature to play.
• Language: As the children use their bodies to engage in nature, language-rich vocabulary and concepts will be taught in the environment where language naturally occurs. Children will work on following directions and using expanded sentence structure as they play, work, and most importantly have fun!
• Social and Emotional Development:  Children will work on problem-solving as a team to create, build and play with multi-sensory materials. Skills that will be encouraged and addressed “in the moment” include being demanding, compromise, transitioning, sharing, listening to others ideas, taking turns, waiting for one’s turn and addressing any anxieties that may be present with trying new things or new sensory experiences. Camp LEAP IN is a safe place for children to experience all levels of feelings and emotions. We are equipped to identify appropriate ways to handle and cope, with the behaviors and emotions that will surface while working in groups with others.  The tools that we use to facilitate this domain include, but are not limited to, Michelle Garcia Winter’s “Social Thinking,” Becky Bailey’s “Conscious Discipline” and Leah M. Kuypers’ “Zones of Regulation.”