Durham Parks and Recreation: Play More!

Did you know that July is Parks and Recreation Month!? In Durham, you can celebrate with us by participating in our Fun Caravan, which will be visiting parks all over the city. Fun Caravan is a mobile recreation program that brings recreation to communities throughout Durham by providing a variety of fun, active, and challenging recreation experiences for children up to 12 years old. The program offers a variety of unstructured activities from arts and crafts to obstacle courses to more traditional games like relay races. All children must be accompanied by an adult. Weather permitting, there will be five Fun Caravans this July- one every Wednesday morning! Unstructured play is critical for the healthy development of children. At Fun Caravan, we provide arts and crafts supplies and outdoor resources for games, and then encourage children and their parents to play freely! Allow your child to lead and create the games. When children are given the time and space to play liberally, the

School is out and summer boredom will soon kick in...but we've got your teens covered with a full schedule of activities to keep them active and engaged! MyDurham is a free evening program held during the school year for teens 13 to 18 years old at six of our local recreation centers every Monday through Friday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. This year, we're excited to announce the program is expanding into the summer months, with more free offerings for teens while they are out of school! Swing by Weaver Street Recreation Center (3000 East Weaver Street) or the Durham Teen Center at Lyon Park (1101 Cornell Street), for free drop-in programming starting at 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Teens must have an active 2019-2020 MyDurham membership, which is free to all teens, and can be obtained upon their first visit to the program. Activities will include gardening, video game tournaments, indoor hockey, arts and crafts, job readiness, and best of all, three off-campus fiel

Durham Parks and Recreation’s Outdoor Recreation Unit invites you to spend some time in nature with us at the new Environmental Education Pavilion at West Point on the Eno. Last summer, the North Carolina State University School of Design’s Summer Design Studio designed and built a beautiful pavilion overlooking a sprawling meadow on the north side of West Point on the Eno Park. The project, funded by Durham Parks Foundation and various other supporters, was completed in ten short weeks during the heat of the summer and gave us a perfect place to present nature-based programming and to invite our community to explore the outdoors. Prior to the completion of the Environmental Education Pavilion, the Durham Parks and Recreation Outdoor Recreation unit did not have a specific programming area. Programs were led at many of the beautiful parks around the city but there was not a location to have a home base. Beginning in the Fall of 2018, upon the completion of the new pavilion, we were

By: Danielle Haynes, Care Programs Administrator The smell of sun screen, children laughing in the back ground, Kidz Bop rhythms playing in the background mixed with sunny hot days is what awaits us! Durham Parks and Recreation offers 13 summer camps in total, all providing a different variation of activities and fun. Have you ever had the summer camp experience? Lifelong memories and friendships are built alongside the construction of plastic lanyards that takes all summer to truly master the top knot- but there are a few who will be determined to master this skill. There are games of imagination with play fire trucks, doll houses, board games, play kitchens and restaurant menus created with food items that we can only wish existed in real life. What about that favorite camp counselor? Nothing tops the feeling of seeing your favorite camp counselor walk through the door. There is a sense of excitement and security that rushes over participants. How do I know? I once was th