The leaves have changed at camp. We have celebrated the Jewish New Year and have reflected during Yom Kippur. As we head further into the fall season and busy school year, we wanted to take a moment to share with you, our camp families, some highlights of this past summer at Blue Star. Summer 2014 was one for the record books, and we are grateful to have been able to share it with your family!

This past summer at camp, our first ever 4-3-7 season, gave us countless opportunities to be Bold! We welcomed rookie campers to Blue Star in our 67th season and began a Horseback Skills Camp too! These new session offerings gave campers and their families more options for Blue Star summer “magic,” created a more harmonious experience for our campers, and infused the summer with excitement.

Creating a seven week summer season allowed us to truly think “outside the box” with all aspects of our camp program. Spirit Day, Color Run, Campstock Festival, Dinner & A Show in HeRo, and camp-wide Shabbat were a few new programmatic elements that we introduced in 2014. We also hosted a wonderful Visiting Day for camp families with a coffee truck, a bluegrass band, and fun camp activities. As always, new evening programs and trip options for some units were enjoyed by our campers this past season. AND we began a “Blue Star options sampler week,” a first in Blue Star history! Campers were able to select different Blue Star options each day for the first week of second session. Returning and new campers loved getting to experience BSC options in this way!

We continued the traditions and camp-wide programs our campers and staff consider “staples” of a Blue Star summer as well with an awesome Red, White and Blue Star Color War on July 4th (what a break-out!), Pinnacle Beach Resort, Camp Carnival, Zimriah, Night at the Granny’s, four team Maccabiah – Battle of the Elements (teams for life), camp-wide Havdalah & BSC TV in the HeRo, Lantern Ceremony on the final Friday night of the summer and so much more.

We sang together in the Chapel at Friday night and Saturday morning Shabbat services, we played at the beach parties and enjoyed Camp’s new AWESOME water toy, we ate delicious food in our lovely newly renovated dining halls.

We learned about our camp Living Wall, a statement of our camp’s commitment to sustainability with a LEED certified landscape architect.

As a camp community, we fully embraced and participated in the Conservation Generation program…we conserved water and other natural resources. We became more aware of ways in which we can become a more sustainable planet and implemented them! And we made some amazing art projects as part of our participation in Conservation Generation too (stay tuned for a full blog on these art projects with beautiful pictures)!

Together we shared so many spectacular moments; the feelings of being in our “forever home” as one Blue Star family, the spirit of friendship, community and open-heartedness that make camp a magical place to be, the individual and collective connection to our best selves. This summer, camp was happy, healthy, innovative, exciting, fun and a truly beautiful experience for campers and staff!

Seth and I (and our entire year-round team) are already eagerly, excitedly, busily planning for Summer 2015! What new and exciting developments can you expect to see at camp next season? Stay tuned to find out!

Here’s a quick “teaser” for you though. Four words…NEW CUSTOM CLIMBING TOWER!

ENJOY OUR SUMMER 2014 HIGHLIGHTS SLIDESHOW…

https://www.bluestarcamps.com/blue-star-families/?a=view-scrapbook