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Marist High School is providing the Southside Summer Festival to raise money for financial aid in the 2024-2025 school year. The BoDeans will headline the third annual Southside Summer Festival, presented by Marist, which will take place on Saturday, July 20th, 2024, from 4:00 pm – 10:00 pm. Open to ages 21 and above, Southside Summer Festival features three live bands on the Marist Football Field.

You are invited to a FREE entrepreneurship camp for girls 8-12 years old with Female Strong sponsored by Forward Space! Female Strong Camp is an empowering experience that engages participants in meaningful discussions about confidence, passions, goals, and innovative solutions to real-world challenges. It's a unique opportunity for young girls to connect with peers, hear from inspiring Chicagoland professionals, and focus on personal growth in a supportive environment. What to expect: Engage with peers about each other’s unique selves, confidence journeys, passions, and goals! Hear from Forward Space employees with different roles about how to achieve goals, take risks, mess up, and stay true to yourself in the process! Reflect on your dreams & ideas and develop an action plan to make them happen! This is a free camp, but RSVP is required. Please go here to register. Free parking is available in the side lots. This is an external partner event. Please contact the organization directly with any questions or concerns: sabrina@femalestrong.org.

Snapology offers the best S.T.E.A.M. camps in the area. Our camps are made for both FUN and learning, utilizing one of the world's most exciting toys, LEGO®. We have camps inspired and associated with many of the top games, activities, movies, and more. We have robotics camps, technical camps, and even camps for the Pre-K kiddos. Your kids will love our fun camp topics and themes, but Shh, don’t tell them it’s educational! We accept children ages ages 5 -12.

Our Summer camp is a continuation of Montessori classroom experience with additional opportunities for several rich outdoor activities. Within the comfortable parameters of Montessori Environment, we take the children on a journey of Spanish Camp during June, Art and Craft in July , Music and Scavenger Hunt in August. Also, we offer random tennis classes throughout the 3 summer months.

Join NPN and Dr. Shelley Upton with Chicago Psychotherapy PLLC as we talk through how and when to get your child evaluated for developmental differences for those children presenting as early as preschool years through those with lower support needs who are starting to present after they have begun their education journey. Dr Upton will also speak through her experience with IEP' and how an IEP evaluation and a clinical evaluation differ and how best to utilize them to support your child's needs. Dr. Upton specializes in the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, learning disabilities, and other neurodevelopmental disabilities. She is skilled at conducting a variety of cognitive, neuropsychological, developmental, and adaptive measures with both typically developing and neuro-diverse patients (e.g., ASD, fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). Dr. Upton also has experience in the administration of various specialty evaluations such as special education eligibility evaluations and evaluations for the purposes of procuring accommodations for high stakes tests (e.g., the ACT and SAT). She has an extensive background in working with neurodiverse clients across the lifespan and their families.

“The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love, we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.” —bell hooks Liberation is defined as the act of being freed from imprisonment, slavery, or some type of captivity. Love and liberation are two things that go hand in hand. One cannot exist without the other. There are different kinds of love: self, familial, platonic, romantic, community, cultural—the bounds are limitless. How has love acted as a liberating force in your life? Contributing youth artist are asked to consider the theme of “Love and Liberation” broadly and to interpret this prompt creatively in their submissions. About 21Minus 21Minus is a one-day showcase curated and produced by Teen Creative Agency (TCA) with support from Lead Artists Olive Stefanski and Miguel Limon, and Ahmad Bracey, Manager of Youth and Schools. This is a free event for people ages 21 and under and their families, but RSVP is required. Please go here to register. The parking garage is located on Chicago Avenue just west of Fairbanks Court and adjacent to the museum. The garage does not provide direct access to the museum. When you exit the garage, simply turn right and walk west up Chicago Avenue. Our entrances face Mies Van Der Rohe Way. This is an external partner event. Please contact the organization directly with any questions or concerns: sypervaiz@mcachicago.org

Summer is a time for joy and play, but for families with disabilities, it can sometimes bring unique challenges, especially when juggling the needs of multiple children. Often, siblings of individuals with disabilities can feel overlooked or struggle to connect and understand their brother or sister. Join us for a warm and inclusive playdate designed to nurture strong, meaningful relationships between siblings! Led by our compassionate team at Leep Forward, kids will engage in delightful activities and games aimed at fostering genuine connections. Meanwhile, parents will have the opportunity to observe and learn valuable techniques for creating supportive environments at home that encourage sibling play and interaction. Our panel of siblings, spanning different ages, will share their own experiences and offer practical advice to parents on cultivating healthy sibling relationships and ensuring that each child receives the support they need. Plus, families will enjoy community connections, delicious food, open play, and exciting giveaways! Come join us for this FUN and enriching event, where every child is celebrated and valued for who they are! Onsite and street parking available. This is a free event, but RSVP is required. Please go here to register. This is an external partner event. Please contact the organization directly with any questions or concerns: ttjeanbaptiste@cps.edu.

As soon as we arrived at Family Camp in Michigan last summer I started to lose track of time. We had decided to take a family vacation at a kids sleep away summer camp for a few days. Ostensibly it was to introduce our two kids to camp. But I was also curious to experience the classic American summer camp that I had seen in movies like “The Parent Trap” for myself—the kind with cabins and scenic ponds and bonfires around which we’d roast marshmallows and sing camp songs. We arrived at camp a bit late and so we dropped our stuff off in our cabin and headed to dinner at an array of outdoor picnic tables. As we started talking about the next few days and all the activities we wanted to try, I instinctively reached for my phone to check the time. And, I realized I’d left it at the cabin—something that I would do for the rest of family camp. How relatively easy it was for all of us to disconnect from our devices was one of the happy surprises from camp. At home, my boys typically default to watching screens or playing video games during down time. We set screen time limits but then find ourselves having to play screen time police, a role we do not relish. At family camp, the only devices available were the phones my husband and I had brought with us. And, because all meals and activities were already arranged and on-site it was easy to break the habit of constantly checking them. No need to look up directions, make dinner reservations, text the babysitter, or even keep track of time—our days revolved around a loose schedule of participating in various sporty activities, eating meals and, yes, roasting marshmallows around a bonfire! For the boys, the chance to try new things made them forget their devices quickly. When I asked my kids recently whether they had missed their screens at camp my older son replied “it just wasn’t on my mind.” And, it’s true. With so many activities within walking distance of our cabin, we all discovered newfound interests. My younger son discovered his love of archery and spent hours trying to hit a bullseye. And, the boys and I all tried water skiing for the first time– an exhilarating and slightly terrifying experience. At night, we’d all fall into our twin beds exhausted from our active days. We also quickly learned that the best way to discover things at camp was to explore. One night, we emerged from our cabin and noticed a number of families heading through a path in the woods that we hadn’t seen before. We decided to follow these families and discovered a shortcut to dinner! This tiny discovery felt huge, like we’d gained inside camper knowledge. And the fact that we’d gained it through our own powers of observation—not our phones—felt so satisfying. With more space from our screens, we all surprised ourselves and each other. My boys invented an imaginary game, incomprehensible to adults, that completely absorbed them for long stretches (and which they continue to play to this day). And, I slowly gained confidence that I was ready to re-enter the paid workforce after five-and-a-half years as a stay-at-home mom. Something about radically changing the scenery and rhythms of our day, and finding out we could adapt, made me feel confident that I could do this in other areas of my life too. For families looking to plan an unplugged vacation, the best advice that I have is to approach it with a sense of adventure. Embrace getting out of your comfort zone and try to find somewhere with lots of things to keep you occupied during the day. We loved attending family camp at Lake of the Woods and Greenwoods Camp. But there are plenty of other places that offer family camp including the YMCA Family Camp Nawakwa in Wisconsin and YMCA Family Camp Pinewood in Michigan. For those families wanting a true camping in a tent experience, the Chicago Park District offers a Family Camping program with campfires and s’mores of course!

Side Quest Social Club is a makerspace and process-inspired boutique social club created-for and curated-by tweens (aged 9-13)!

The nonprofit Rogers Park Business Alliance (RPBA) announces 23 vendors for the 15th anniversary season of the Glenwood Sunday Market, which will operate every Sunday from June 2 to October 27 (closed on June 30 and August 18), from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m. On the southbound Glenwood Avenue between Morse and Lunt Avenues (west side of the CTA Red Line Morse stop), the Market offers a variety of products ranging from meat, produce, dairy, honey, bakeries, sweets, to coffee, tofu, popsicles and flowers, plus newly added free kids’ activities. New this year will be free weekly kids programming such as scavenger hunts, recipes, and agricultural lessons about participating farmers. The weekly recipes will incorporate in-season ingredients available at the Market. All vendors accept cash and most accept credit and debit cards. LINK Cards and other SNAP cards are also accepted at the Market, with a grant match program continuing in 2024: every LINK transaction will be matched thanks to the generous grant from LinkUp Illinois. No RSVP is necessary, but please go here for more details. Street parking availalbe. This is an external partner event. Please contact the organization directly with any questions or concerns: Maggie@silvermangroupchicago.com.

Mnemon is the secret weapon of spelling bee competitors from TX, GA, FL & more. It is your comprehensive training platform to master any word for the National Spelling Bee. If you are ready to win at Nationals, State, Regionals, and beyond, and don't want to spend over $10,000, then don't wait! Pay a fraction of the cost of traditional methods and get yourself ready for it this summer.

This is an excerpt from the Chicago Tribune's latest column, Kids like to swear. Do I blame Olivia Rodrigo? Or do I blame myself?, written by Christopher Borrelli. This column features a quote from NPN's Executive Director, Amy Johnson. I turned to the parent next to me and asked what she was going to do about all the, you know … I didn’t want to say it. The what, the parent asked. All of the swearing, the F-bombs and such, I said. This was several weeks ago, at the United Center, where Olivia Rodrigo was playing the second of two shows. Soon, if her new album, “Guts,” was any indication, she would be singing F-words and S-words and lots of other B(ad)-words, loudly and prolifically, and to judge by the lines to get in, she would be singing them to many, many children, middle school-aged and younger. Which meant, of course, thousands of young children shouting back naughty, naughty words. I wasn’t clutching my pearls in horror. But I was wondering: Have we all decided — you, me, Olivia, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift — that young children can swear now? Kim Vanhyning, the parent beside me, from the village of Channahon near Joliet, was attending with her two children, ages 9 and 12, and their grandmother Dorothy, who whispered: The kids recently lost their 7-year-old brother to cancer; they had shirts made that read “(Expletive) Cancer.” They knew swear words more intimately than they liked. And yet, Kim said, for tonight, “the rule is: Sing the swear words, but only tonight.” At their age, I would have felt weird swearing in front of my mom...

Summer Improv Camp at iO Theater! Dynamic & engaging week-long programs for Youth (Ages 7-12) + Teens (Ages 13-17) designed to build performance skills & develop confidence, teamwork & effective communication techniques. Improv's not just about being funny; it’s about embracing spontaneity, taking risks, & strengthening your voice. iO Improv Summer Camp culminates in a chance for students to showcase their new skills in live performance for family & friends!

St. Matthias School is the only wall-to-wall Catholic International Baccalaureate (IB) elementary school in Illinois. Located in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago, we are committed to welcoming everyone and creating a love of lifelong learning in our students. We are dedicated to developing faith-centered, service-oriented, compassionate global citizens through a program of differentiated, interdisciplinary, and rigorous inquiry.

At Tutu School, we believe in exposing children at the earliest possible age to creativity, movement, and classical music; and that twirling should be a fundamental part of any childhood. Classes start at 18 months and are always ongoing throughout the year. We can’t wait to twirl with you!

Join Hive for a free overview workshop on Conscious Parenting, you will learn about the 10-pillar framework that will give you additional tips and tools to bring more peace, calm & joy into your home, as you head into summer! RSVP required. Please go here to register.

Chicago Psychotherapy is a private therapy practice in Lincoln Park. We offer individual therapy, couples therapy, family therapy, and group therapy, in addition to assessment services, parenting workshops, school-based services, and clinical training. We support clients of all ages, from all walks of life. We believe in seeing clients for their strengths, understanding individuals in context, and working collaboratively with clients and their families in meeting treatment goals.

Chicago Fire FC Camps are the perfect way to introduce your child to the world’s fastest-growing youth sport and develop their soccer skills. In addition to small group instruction centered around technical themes and Social and Emotional Learning traits, participants receive a Chicago Fire camp t-shirt, and a ticket to a Chicago Fire match. Along with the ticket comes a special matchday experience including the opportunity to play at Soldier Field pre-match, player autographs, an appearance by lovable Fire mascot, Sparky, and discounted tickets for the whole family. We accept children ages 6-14.