Liberty Lake Day Camp is trying to bring some “fun in the sun” to people during the coronavirus outbreak.
On March 23, the camp started an initiative called Virtual Camp through its social media platforms that individuals throughout Burlington County can access and watch in their living rooms.
Owner-director Andy Pritikin and longtime camp director Brandi Carnivale-Anderson have created hours of programming to help families with children have fun while they are home.
“We feel our role in the lives of families is to figure out how to make lemonade out of lemons, while being a resource of youth development and helping to keep the focus on the important things in life, like quality time with family, and the opportunity to learn and explore together,” Pritikin said.
The first day of Virtual Camp began with Monday Assembly, a tradition at the camp where there is a flag raising ceremony at the camp’s lakeside amphitheater.
Using the social media application Tik Tok, Regan Gillespie then sang an improvised version of the camp’s “The Wake Up Song.”
Gillespie is a Burlington native who has been involved with the camp since she was 5 years old. She is a science teacher at East Brunswick High School.
Activities that are being done with virtual camp include a photo scavenger hunt going on this week, during which children take pictures of flowers that are blooming during the spring and post them into an event page on the camp’s Facebook page.
The camp also has a video up on Facebook of camp chef Sean “Stu” O’Brien doing a tutorial to teach youngsters how to make paper airplanes.
“During the summer camp season, Liberty Lake is proud to be an outdoors, screen-free environment. When this current situation thankfully ends, kids and parents are going to want to be outdoors, away from screens like never before,” Pritikin said.
“We are all overdosing on screens right now, which may be what society needs to re-appreciate the virtues of nature, face-to-face communication and true social connection,” he said.
Liberty Lake Day Camp has a 60-acre facility on Mansfield Township. For more information, visit libertylakedaycamp.com