Camp Rhino: Building Community Through Summer Adventures
Written by Elaine Bonadies (1st – 2nd Grade Teacher)
Hi! If by some chance we’ve never met, I’m Elaine, co-director of Camp Rhino with Noelle (3rd-4th Grade Teacher) and co-teacher of the K2 here at Harmony with Adam. I have also worked with Wonderlab in several different capacities including as a work study, and after school program leader, outreach program presenter, and, for more than ten years, as a summer camp teacher. In addition, I’ve taught camps for the YMCA, for MSD of Lawrence Township, and MCCSC’s own summer program. As a teacher, I’ve filled many summers with opportunities to spend long summer days with kids from the schools and programs I’ve worked with.
As my first summer at Harmony approached, I asked around about summer program opportunities and had parents asking me if we had any sort of camps. A few parents asked if I would put together a playgroup basically a few half and full days a week. We chose a few weeks and made a schedule and had a fun summer of water play, crafting, building, reading, and field trips to the library, the fair, IU, and the pool.
The following summer, Harmony was under a LOT of construction as the GeoThermal project was fully installed, so we did not attempt any sort of summer playgroup or camp, but we did dream about the potential for summer camps once the A/C was installed!
And finally, in the summer of 2024, we had both a potential for camp AND air conditioning! We partnered with Ann Dorwin to offer Circus Camp! Ann has been teaching Circus for a long time, and we are so lucky to have her within our community. After just a short two week camp, we put on a circus! The experience was phenomenal and really shone a light on the potential of having special programming offered throughout our summer.
So, this past fall, the beginnings of Camp Rhino were born. As we thought about first and foremost making this accessible to our own community, and like other programs, giving a benefit to our “members” so to speak. We also wanted to be more accessible to families that might not be able to pay the full amount for camp up front and wanted to offer a variety of ways and plans for payment.
As the groundwork was laid, Noelle and I both committed to the roles of co-directors of Camp Rhino. Noelle has an amazing background in working with camps that have their focus around nature and exploration. While my background is more urban camps, hers is in the camps in the wilderness. This balance is allowing us to offer a wide variety of options to our campers and we are both excited to have opportunities to write curriculum that matches our passions and interests.
We are so glad to have the full support of our coworkers and administration in this endeavor, and feel that it is such an incredible opportunity to get to know more community members, to get to know more of the children within our community, and to give our coworkers and others within our community a space to explore educating others within their passions.
