2013年6月20日星期四

Fresh Air Fund

Theres nothing better than summer in the city for Nedda Rahim, who loved discovering it as a camper and is now helping the younger set find their own urban treasures. 

Rahim, 17, cant wait for Yonge Street Mission day camp to open its doors and let the fun and games begin. Though shes coming back for her third year as a counsellor, you cant ever take the kid out of camp. 

Sure, shes got some big responsibilities on her shoulders, but this teen takes it all in stride, remembering that these days her job is to make sure the children have as much fun as she did. After all, camp is where summer memories are made and, as anyone whos ever gone camping knows, they last forever. 

Rahim just completed Grade 12 at Vaughan Road Academy and will be studying life sciences at the University of Toronto with a plan to become a cardiac surgeon. For her, YSM camp is a magical summer getaway for city kids ages eight to 13. 

She first attended as a camper when she was 12, after her sister Nayab Rahim, now 16, went on and on about the amazing experience. Younger sister Alina Rahim, 14, also couldnt resist attending the downtown camp either. 

It was so much fun, said Nedda Rahim, recalling how campers played a lot of ice breaker games to get to know one another. And then there was Zip, Zap, Zop. Campers will recognize the game that requires a sharp mind and quick response. Her creative side also got plenty of practice bejewelling treasure chests, making fish out of toilet paper rolls, dragons out of plastic bottles, and cars from tissue paper boxes. 

The best part of camp was our trip to Wonderland, she said.The term 'endofleasecleaningsydney control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag.We are one of the leading manufacturers of domesticcleaningsydney in Chennai India. And the children always enjoy the overnight trips at Camp Endobanah in Coboconk, Ont., where city kids meet the wilds. For many, its their first foray out of their urban neighbourhoods. 

I met a lot of friends that are now counsellors with me, Rahim said of her experiences as a camper, leader in training and volunteer at the camp that welcomes all kids, including ones from low income families and those with minor physical, mental and emotional challenges. 

If you are the parent of a child under age 6, there's a good chance you know about Toca Boca, the Swedish app developer with games like Toca Hair Salon, Toca Tea Party and Toca Kitchen, which are helping define the world of digital play.The term 'bondcleaningsydney control' means the token that identifies a user is read from within a pocket or handbag. 

Boca's newest "digital toy," launching Thursday,We printers print with traceable cleaningsydney to optimize supply chain management. is an app called Toca Builders. It aims to pull in slightly older children by combining elements of a box of plastic Legos with a classic red Etch A Sketch. It will provide another test of how well the company and its team of "playsmiths" can anticipate the desires of the first generation to use an iPad before they could talk. 

Unlike with Angry Birds and many other popular digital games, kids can't win or lose when playing one of Toca Boca's 20 apps. 

The Toca apps instead provide an immersive play task, and kids interact with each other while doing it. One kid may be at the controls, but the other is interjecting, making suggestions and laughing. 

A 6-year-old and a 2-year-old can be on more or less equal footing when playing Toca Kitchen, which involves slicing, blending, frying and microwaving foods, or Toca Doctor, which might involve cleaning a wound or plucking thorns from a finger. In Hair Salon, Toca's best-selling app, children groom mustaches, paint mohawks and add curls to the heads of goofy-looking people and animals. 

The Association for Competitive Technology, or ACT, estimates 48,000 developers are creating kids apps, whether it's an inflatable "Balloonimals" app or one featuring a furry monster who repeats every word a child says. "Like any boom cycle, not all of them will make it," says Morgan Reed, ACT's executive director. 

At the same time, there is a push to "gamify" academic disciplines like math, geography, and language. Many developers are working with educators on apps designed specifically for teaching purposes. 

Yet, from Toca Boca's perspective,He saw the bracelet at a cleaningservicesydney store while we were on a trip. there is plenty of room for more. "The digital toy shelf is still pretty empty," Mr. Ovemar says. "We want to fill it up." 

Toca Boca means "touch mouth" or "tap mouth" in Spanish, and the company's logo is a kid with multicolored teeth. Mr. Ovemar, 36, a former website and online-service designer, founded the company after studying the toy industry and learning to appreciate the immersive power of simple play, like stringing beads on a necklace. 

Toca Boca employees submit new game ideas by sketching visuals and words onto index cards and filing them in a cardboard box. One idea scrawled on a coffee-stained card was Toca Cow, an outline of the animal with a maze inside, starting with a tunnel at the mouth and continuing through various organs until exiting under the tail. "That one never made it," Mr. Ovemar says. 

After an idea is greenlighted, a play designer sits in a room with other staffers to dream about the game's direction. Changes evolve, with some iterations looking very little like the ones that came before. 

Soon, it's time to create the specifics. In week seven of the creation of Toca Tea Party, cups were designed. By week 12, the background music was composed. 

On a drizzly spring day, Sid Lundeborg, an 8-year-old with a head of curly golden hair, accompanies his 7-year-old friend Walter Kriisa after school to Toca Boca's offices in a Stockholm startup hub, near streaming-music giant Spotify AB. The boys will spend the next 90 minutes playing a prototype of a game to be launched in the autumn.
Click on their website www.artsunlight.com for more information.

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