Created By Kids is excited to announce our 8TH YEAR running our Summer Camp Program! We will host a thirteen-week Summer Camp Program beginning this June. Each week, students explore different thematic concepts, beginning with an educational foundation as inspiration.
Each camp week is based on a unique theme. During the week we’ll use a variety of art-making techniques, including ceramics (both hand-built and wheel-thrown), jewelry-making, mixed media, textiles, printmaking, paper-making, art installations and more! The variety will keep kids interested while they learn about cultures, history, and literature through unique artistic projects.
Recommended Age: 5-10 years
Our camps are held at our studio, located at 592 Pacific St. Brooklyn, NY, steps away from Atlantic Terminal/Barclays Center.
Camp begins at 9am with drop off beginning at 8:45am. We offer Early Bird drop-off beginning at 8am ($20 per day/$80 per week).
All students should be picked up by 4pm. We offer extended day pick-up until 5pm ($20 per day/$80 per week) or 6pm ($40 per day/$160 per week).
Late pick-ups may be subject to a fee; please read our policies & general info page before registering for camp!
We hope to see everyone for another CREATIVE SUMMER at CBK!
Specialty Camp Weeks:
These camps have limited spots available. The recommended age will vary depending on the subject. These camps are not available for our Junior Counselor program or School Auction Winners.
We’ll be going far, far back in time during our Prehistoric week. We’ll begin by exploring and recreating ancient cave paintings. We’ll use one of the first art mediums discovered by humans - CLAY! - to make animal sculptures from Red Earthenware, and watch our own crystals grow on charcoal. We’ll build some of hand tools on our own, just as the first humans did. We’ll look at dinosaurs, their extinction, and the phenomenon of art that was inspired by their existence. We’ll also do some “leather” working (using vegan materials), basket weaving and more. Come join Created by Kids as we take a journey back to the prehistoric era!
*Fine Art Day Camp has single days available
With so many great New York City art museums and galleries, inspiration is always right around the corner! This week, we’ll explore the work of artists currently on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, the Guggenheim, MoMA, and more. We’ll create colorful works inspired by Félix Fénéon, unique ceramic reliefs by artist Rayyane Tabet, and look to Niki De Saint Phalle's style for a one of a kind painting. Campers will also learn sewing basics as we put our twist on artist Julie Mehretu by making their very own drawstring bags. Come explore what’s happening in the New York art scene with Created by Kids!
*Fine Art Day Camp has single days available
During our Ceramics & Pottery Wheel camp week students explore the various ways in which artists use clay to make functional and sculptural items. We will learn all basic techniques involved with throwing on the pottery wheels, beginning with wedging and centering the clay. Through repeated practice, they'll learn to shape the clay as the wheel spins, gaining a feel for the proper thickness and form. The students will also get the chance to hand build with clay not only to add to their thrown pieces (handles lids etc.) but to also make pottery by building with slabs, coils and pinching. Students will learn different glazing methods (brushing, dipping, under layering and more) to give their pottery a finished look.
Throughout the week we will gather inspiration from other ceramicists, adding different textures created with a variety of tools and manipulating the functional forms into different shapes to develop their signature style of pottery. Each student will go home with a comprehensive and impressive body of work they will be proud of!
* Since all pottery needs time to air dry and fire some pieces will not be ready to go home until the following week - we will email parents when the projects are ready to be picked up.
Calling all constructors, builders, makers, and more! Join Created by Kids as we mash up art and construction. This week, we will study many of the great builders, from Frank Lloyd Wright to the Egyptians. We’ll create plaster models of future dream homes. We’ll look at habitats to thoughtfully construct a home for animals, and work in teams for our tallest tower contest. Our campers will find inspiration in one of the world’s most popular building tools - Legos! - to make an instruction guide for their unique creations. These cool projects are sure to build students’ confidence and creativity!
Exploring creativity can be just as exciting as discovering a hidden cave, an ancient temple or a secret room. During our Adventure week, students can do it all with a “Choose Your Own” Art-venture! Your art adventurer will choose a focus for the week - an action-oriented play or puppet show, a Jumanji-inspired board game, story book, or comic book - whatever gets their pulses racing! They’ll spend the whole week working toward a finished piece: our playwrights will make costumes, posters, and more; our puppeteers will develop unique characters and create their puppets from scratch; our game-makers will construct pawns, cards, boards and instruction manuals; our authors will bind books, illustrate them, and write the text. These imaginative art projects will relate to the exciting escapades of real-life and fictional explorers, helping them live out their wildest adventures!
Created by Kids goes Pint Size in this fun week of all things mini! Campers will create mini versions of their favorite things using a variety of mediums. We’ll make tiny homes and buildings out of clay to create an entire mini city inside the CBK studio. We’ll hand-sew felt to re-create our favorite mini foods, inspired by artist Lucy Sparrow’s “fauxdega” installations. We’ll create diorama sized mini movie sets and sculpey figures to interact inside them. Students will even get the chance to work on MINI POTTERY WHEELS creating a miniature tea set they can actually use! And we’ll hone in on our fine motor skills with itty-bitty brushes as we paint our own mini portraits for the world’s smallest art gallery! Campers will certainly make a big statement with a variety of projects that will fit in the palm of their hands.
Clothing and textiles are a part of our everyday lives, but there’s a long process that goes into their design and construction. That’s what makes fashion design one of the most exciting careers in the art world! During our Fashion Design week, we’ll explore the process from beginning to end, with the ultimate goal of creating two wearable garments of the student's’ choosing.
This begins with a study of today’s fashion where we’ll look at style, movement, and color to create our own illustrations and collages from magazines to design fashion boards. Then, we’ll learn the basics of hand sewing, stitchery, and machine sewing - each student will have their own sewing station to practice essential skills, such as hemming and making seams. Students will design their own textiles from raw material, creating a unique design through safe dyeing processes, painting, printing (block or screen) and batik techniques; this is what they will use to construct their final pieces - either a dress, skirt, shirt, or bag. We’ll use sewing patterns according to each child’s choice of garment, measuring carefully as we build a finished product they can really wear. Students will be asked to conceptualize their own fashion brand, designing a personalized logo, making a tag, and sewing in a label - just like the apparel they wear every day!
Lights! Camera! Art! It's movie week at CBK and your child is in the director’s chair. We'll spend the week working together to create our very own stop motion animated film. Kids will create storyboards and production notebooks to flesh out their characters and narrative. Throughout the week we'll use paint and paper to create various sets, build and animate characters out of clay, record voice work as well as their own foley for sound effects using found objects, and ultimately film the finished project. Students will also design and print their own movie posters and other "marketing materials" to promote their movies far and wide. We're ready for our closeup!
Kids are inventors and creators at heart. As such, we have dedicated an entire week of camp to Art & Engineering which will let your child explore the vast realms of their imaginations. Projects include drafting blueprints and then building fantastic structures, creating simple hydraulic lifts out of found objects, launching paper rockets, learning circuit basics, and building small robots. Students will work as a group to make a studio-sized Rube Goldberg machine. Your child will learn that the process is just as important as the finished project while focusing on mechanics, physics, design, and more to create both aesthetic and functional projects!
There's been an art heist at Created By Kids, and we need skilled detectives and masters of espionage to get to the bottom of this! Our studio will be transformed into a crime lab where we'll develop secret identities, spy kits with various sleuthing gadgets, and, of course, funny disguises! Throughout the week they'll collect clues to solve mysteries just like Sherlock Holmes, creating their various aliases to thwart potential spies. They'll be encouraged to hone their powers of observation and detection as we make invisible ink, decoders, science and art projects using our own fingerprints. We’ll even create a Mission Impossible-style “laser room” obstacle course!
From Brooklyn all the way back to 14th century Mesoamerica, Ancient Art-ifacts week at CBK will put your child in the heart of an immersive, celebratory, cultural, and (of course) artistic experience. We'll start by building and decorating a traditional Aztec pyramid - like the famous Teotihauacan - as the centerpiece for our week. We'll work across a variety of different mediums to encompass the great artistic scope of the past. We’ll explore ancient tools and technologies to create metalwork for jewelry including pendants, charms, and necklaces inspired by the ancient Indus Civilization. Campers will work with plaster to create and paint colorful Mayan masks. It's equal parts time travel and art history as we celebrate the rich tapestry of ancient cultures with your child.
Travel with Created By Kids through the stars during our out-of-this-world Outer Space Week. We’ll make embroidered textile constellation scrolls to guide us on our journey, based on symbolism that has personal significance to each student. Along the way, campers will create ceramic UFOs, alien creatures and more. We’ll build hangable planets from paper-mâché. And we’ll create stunning nighttime skyscapes using watercolor, paint splattering techniques, and mono printed moons. Join us on our journey across the universe as we launch of our homemade rockets in this out of this world week of camp!
Whether artists use materials found in nature to create their art or simply take inspiration from natural surroundings, art and nature have gone hand in hand for centuries. In this unique Summer Camp students will learn about nature's role in art. We will use objects found in nature to create unique prints, work with light and water to develop photographic papers, and create our very own art pieces made from found natural objects. We'll look to artists like Tatiana Arocha, Andy Goldsworthy, and more for inspiration. Join us in learning more about how the natural world around us can be used to create art!
CBK's popular Junior Counselor program is back this summer! While our camps are recommended for students aged 5-10, this program allows slightly older students (11-13 years old) the opportunity to gain a sense of leadership by helping younger students and assisting teachers in the art-making process from start to finish. Junior counselors typically assist with daily tasks around the studio - setting up art projects, passing out materials, helping younger students, and more.
Junior counselors are more than welcome to participate in activities and make art projects alongside other students during the camp week if they choose!
Our Junior Counselor program is only available for full weeks of camp and not available during our specialty weeks. Please note, we have limited spaces for JC's each camp week.