Summer Dreamers Academy

Time flies when you’re having fun. That couldn’t be more true for Radio Camp 2012! We had SUCH a blast this summer, and these past five weeks have just soared on by. We will miss each and every one of you, big dreamers!

Our last day was a choose-your-own-adventure day: we recorded with the H1s, drew on the board, played games, talked, danced and reflected on our time with Radio Camp. The second block showed off our blossoming interview skills by talking to Mr. Akeel of MCG’s Art Activism program.

Thanks to all of you for coming to SDA, showing up with smiles, trying new things, sharing pieces of yourselves, showing off your talents, developing your creative mojo, and teaching your teachers what you know best: how to be awesome. We’ll be practicing our new skills until we meet again next year!

P-A-R-T-Y!! That’s how you spell it, and that’s what we did. We went over to the Children’s Museum for our “surprise” and it was SO fun. We looked at this blog here, danced to music, listened to our new CD, decorated our album art, ate pizza, and played with effects boxes that changed the sound of our voices. We didn’t want to leave!

And we shouldn’t forget, in the morning we had a few talented campers perform on stage, and also had a few all-camp award winners! We are SO PROUD of our amazing kids at SDA!!

Today was PLAY DAY. The first block recorded with the H1s, played games, drew on the white board, and learned how to fold origami cranes. The second block ran off to the Children’s Museum, where we explored the awesome exhibits. …

It’s hard to believe, but this is our last audio posting from Radio Camp! The time FLEW by, and we are all so sad to be leaving Camp King. We decided on our own pieces to record in the SLB broadcast studio – some of us sang songs, some told us about themselves, and one even showed of his beat-boxing talents! We surely do have a talented and creative group of kids here in Radio Camp. They are also unbelievably SPIRITED – KWHB was chosen to have the spirit stick again today. I think that makes FIVE days (out of 25 – that’s pretty amazing!) that we were the most spirited kids in all of camp. YAY US!

Today, Ms. Sarah and Ms. May showed us a game called reverse storytelling, where you tell the plot and have friends guess what story you are trying to tell. We figured out that telling a story about chocolate or meatballs gives away the answer really quick! A few of us stumped our classmates though.

We used the H1 recorders again too, answering some more questions about ourselves and our lives. Once we finished that, a few of us sang some songs and performed some chants too.

Did we mention we had the spirit class AGAIN!? Congrats, campers from WHRS!

Today, we simulated a live radio broadcast from our studio. Miss May was our host, and we all got a chance to talk about our favorite things from Radio Camp and Summer Dreamers Academy. We certainly learned a lot about radio and got hands-on experience with different kinds of equipment and experiences. We did such a great job in the studio, that we went outside to Cloud Arbor (our second favorite place to visit when we leave King!), where Miss May became our towel. Til next week, campers!

Already in Radio Camp, we’ve gotten a chance to be the host, the talent, the producer, the programmer… and now, we’ve also been engineers! Today, we built radios from scratch – just a few wires, some transistors, switches and BOOM – A Radio.

We did things a bit different today — our first block went to the radio station and did some recording. Some of our second graders got a chance to be the DJ just the way that Mr. Larry showed us how yesterday! Our fourth graders did some recordings with Miss Sarah (see below).

During second block, we talked about what a programmer does on the radio. We talked about what content goes on the radio, and then put together our own hour by drawing a pie chart! We also got to see the middle-schoolers from Art Activism rehearse for their peace rally tomorrow. Best of luck to them!

What a fun and informative day we had today! We went over to the Children’s Museum where we interviewed Larry Berger, host of The Saturday Light Brigade radio program for the past 37 years. We got a chance to ask him about how he started SLB, how the studio worked, and all the other questions we came up with yesterday. He gave us some great answers and taught us a lot about the studio, the radio program, and what it takes to be a DJ. Thanks, Mister Larry!

This is RADIO WEEK – we’re going to do a whole lot of learning and fun activities around what radio actually is! We went back to the studio today to talk about what we know so far: we certainly know how to use microphones well, as we all demonstrated beautifully. We also know about tuning a radio, different platforms radio can come on (digital, satellite, AM/FM), and a lot more about being in an actual broadcast studio now that we’ve been to Radio Camp!

Tomorrow, we’ll be interviewing Larry Berger, host of The Saturday Light Brigade, so today we came up with a few questions that we want to ask. Our questions were FANTASTIC. We are curious about how he got started, how the studio was built and how it works, what being a DJ (and executive director of a non-profit radio station) is like, how content is chosen, and much more. We can’t wait to ask Mr. Larry all these questions ourselves!