New Jersey Special Children Enjoy Winter Day Camp

The Friendship Circle, which in Bergen County organizes events and social engagement opportunities for children and teens with special needs, while at the same time offering opportunities for teens to volunteer with them, is celebrating its eighth season of winter camp for its participants.

Zeesy Grossbaum, director for the past 10 years of Bergen County’s chapter of the national organization, explained that many students in our community who have special needs go to public schools, which follow a different holiday vacation schedule than the local yeshivas. Therefore, working parents or those with children in other schools or at home are often left needing to work double-time to organize the days off for their children, during the late December and President’s Day vacation weeks.

Grossbaum explained that to fill this gap, they began offering a three-day winter camp eight years ago when the public schools were off, and “Since then, every year we do the winter holiday and then President’s week too, in February,” she said. The camp runs generally from 10 am to 3 pm, but sometimes ends earlier on legal holidays or Friday afternoons.

“I, along with so many parents, cannot express enough how appreciative we are about camp – it gives the kids an enjoyable day with structure that so many need. It enables working parents to work and stay at home parents some time to breathe,” said Teaneck resident Sara Taragin, the mother of a camper.

“I don’t think I would be able to survive a school break without the Friendship Circle camp,” said Daryl Heller, a mother of a camper from Tenafly.

This is the fourth year that the winter camp has been hosted by the Frisch School, in Paramus. The high school is enthusiastic about the program, Grossbaum said, and allows their students to miss class to volunteer as staff for the camp.

“We involve the entire school; each grade gets a day,” said Dr. Kalman Stein, Frisch’s principal.

“Our students emerge from the experience having had an amazing time and feel enriched and inspired to do more,” said Rabbi Joshua Schulman, who directs chesed projects at Frisch. “The feelings of warmth, kindness and sensitivity that the camp generates throughout the halls of our school is palpable and is one of the highlights of our students’ school year.

“Because every student is involved, participating in these types of initiatives becomes almost like second nature for many of our students, and even those who are initially hesitant, return the next year excited to volunteer again,” Schulman said.

The general sentiment in the school is so strongly positive that Schulman shared several effusive survey comments from students. He also described one student who has shone brilliance each time she has participated in the camp over her time in Frisch and was even asked by the staff of the Friendship Circle to participate more often. “She commented to me that, as she thinks about her future, this experience has inspired her to work in the field of special education,” he said.

Thirty-five special needs students attended the camp at Frisch this past vacation. “Because every child is their own world, our support needs to be one-on-one, so we always have the teenaged volunteers present along with professional staff to keep everyone safe and happy,” she said.

“Some children who won’t participate in what we’re doing, so the volunteers keep them entertained with what they enjoy. Regardless of the level of ability, all of these children need to be closely supervised,” she said.

The camp hosts field trips to bowling alleys, sensory gyms, and places like Legoland and World of Wings in addition to sports, baking, art and even entertainment.

A similar camp also organized by Friendship Circle, called Yedidanu, was hosted for 20 elementary school-age special needs children at Yeshivat Noam during the two days of the New Year’s Eve holiday week, and the entire classes of eighth grade girls and eighth grade boys volunteered separately for the program on each of the days.

The camp will be hosted at Frisch again for the President’s Day Holiday from February 18 to 21st, though in previous years that camp has also been hosted by Ma’ayanot. The Friendship Circle also runs a camp at the end of the summer at Lubavitch on the Palisades School, during the week off between summer camp and the school year.