Summer days at Building Twentyone have been nothing short of incredible!

For the month of June we decided we would open our doors to middle school and high school students and make summer programs available to them! We understand that the
excitement that summer brings can quickly become lost when there is a lack of activities. Summer can quickly become, well, boring. As a teen center, we believe that having interaction with other people is essential to our well-being. So, we want to provide as many opportunities as possible for students to connect! Our summer programs provided a space for teenagers to come and hangout in a fun environment while hopefully learning a new skill or two.

This summer we offered a variety of different programs over the span of 3 weeks. We kicked off our summer programs at Spartan Krav Maga in Lansing! We learned the basics of how to defend ourselves in a real-world situations. The instructor helped us to understand that our body can handle a LOT! It is actually our mind that typically gets in the way. Though this is true in self-defense, we also realize that this is true in our everyday situations as well. We must push through our thoughts and our doubt.

We then visited Brody Hall at Michigan State University! They gave us a tour of their facilities and generously gave us free, delicious desserts. The following week we had animal week. We had Preuss Pets come in and introduce us to some of their favorite animals! We got to see a poison dart frog, a tarantula, and a 70+ year old tortoise! We also got to play with a ferret that seemed to be our students favorite creature! Towards the end of the week we took an educational tour around Potter Park Zoo! We got to go around and learn the names of almost all of the animals as well as learn about how they act and why they act that way.

The final week we had a baking course where our students learned how to make cookie cakes! They also had the opportunity to decorate them
as they desired. They are, indeed, very talented! We also did a few team-building activities including an Escape Room game that helped the students connect with each other. On the final day, we had kayaking, archery, and fishing. The students were able to split up into groups of 5 and rotate around to each station. We had an incredible kayaking instructor from The Power of Water in Lansing! We were also fortunate to have Total Firearms come in and run fishing and archery for us. This was a great outdoors day to try something new! We ended the day with playing some games with water balloons to cool off, and in typical summer fashion, we enjoyed some hot dogs, chips, and watermelon.

What a fun summer it was. We are excitedly awaiting the day we open our doors for the fall!

Thank you for joining us this summer! We hope you had as much fun as we did. 🌞