Featured News

Exploring Creativity in Art

One of our most treasured facilities at Nabby is the famed Arts & Crafts “shack”, home to our fantastic Arts & Crafts program led by Janice Tota. Janice is in her second season at Nabby and has three children (Jack – Penn, Danny -Duke and CJ -Tufts) who love to say “hi” to their mom at camp.

Janice’s goals for the program are for Nabby campers to simply enjoy art, use their imagination and most of all, be creative! To inspire their work, Janice develops weekly themes based on the Nabby calendar and seasonal events. For instance, “Star-Spangled Week” led up to our Red, White and Blue day and pictures were at the centerpiece of the week culminating in our Photo Day. One theme Janice is
particularly excited about this summer is Pirate Week with an “Ahoy Mateys” theme. During this week, campers will get to make treasure maps and a plaque with their own pirate name. It should be a yo ho ho jolly time!

Janice is joined this summer by the wonderful team of Jenna Barone, a recent graduate of Walter Panas High School and Phoebe Asch (whose twin sister Gillian also works here!) who is entering her Junior year at Horace Greeley.

In addition to daily classes for our junior campers, Janice and team also offer Interest Period activities for our senior campers who want to explore their creativity. From morning till the end of the day, the art shack is full of colorful activity and learning — and we hope our campers enjoy displaying all their beautiful projects at home!

Meet The Office Team

While Dunder Mifflin might be the most well-known, no “Office” is better at what they do than the team at Nabby!

The Nabby office is active from early morning through the end of the day with parent correspondence, counselor communication and camper care. Working behind the scenes alongside Joe & Rita are three incredible women who do so much to keep our Nabby community safe and happy.

Ruth Schlosberg came to Nabby in the summer of 2013 and loved it so much that she stayed in the office year round, becoming a valuable member of the leadership team. Ruth is now an assistant director and handles camper enrollment, billing, parent communication and so much more! If you have any day-to-day questions, Ruth is here to help you! Ruth attended West Virginia University, which turned out to be a pretty good decision as she met her husband there and has been married for 21 years. Ruth has two boys who attend Yorktown schools and the younger of the two, Ty, will undoubtedly, one day, be the Nabby counselor Belly Flop Champion! Ruth’s guilty pleasures are Madonna concerts, reality TV and peanut butter!

Nabby is very fortunate to have TWO nurses on staff focused on the health and well-being of all campers. Christine Cody has been at Nabby for 13 years and has single handedly given out more band-aids during a summer than humanly possible. Christine received her RN degree from SUNY Binghamton and works as the nurse for Buchanan Verplank Elementary during the school year. Christine and her husband have two children and when she’s not at Nabby or at school, you might find her cheering for her son at the hockey rink or attending her daughter’s many dance recitals! Her guilty pleasures are being a hockey and dance Mom.

Gina Fitzsimons has been with Nabby for two summers and is one very busy lady! She received her RN degree from Westchester Community College and during the school year, she’s the nurse at Peekskill Elementary school. Gina and her husband have four children here at Nabby and yet finds the time to teach a yoga class at the Yoga Heights Studio in Yorktown. Although she’s an advocate for healthy eating, we did find out that her guilty pleasure is cookies!

Nabby’s Swim Program

Swimming is at the heart of the summer experience at Nabby, with the program being designed by our Director Joe who was a swimmer at Rutgers University and swim coach for 35 years.

Our 2021 pool staff is an enthusiastic crew of lifeguards and WSI certified instructors led by our pool director Adam Shavitz. Adam has been involved in swimming for 29 years as a lifeguard, Water Safety Instructor and Pool Director and is in his first year at Nabby. “The pool has always been my passion as I enjoy watching new swimmers go from just getting their faces wet to performing the front crawl.” During the school year, Adam is a special education teacher and track coach at Clarkstown North High School.

Nabby has three beautifully maintained pools on campus. The small and middle pools are heated to enable our younger swimmers to feel comfortable in the water. Our newest and largest pool is 90 feet long (!) with a very large shallow end and an always entertaining diving board and slide in the 10 ft deep end.

All campers have two swim periods each day with a morning instructional swim and afternoon free swim period. To ensure our campers are safe and in the right size pool for them, we offer testing beginning on day one of camp.

All beginning swimmers who are working towards the middle pool test receive a green band when they are able to do three things: swim the length of the middle pool doing a front crawl with proper breathing, tread water for a minute and retrieve an object at the bottom of the pool at the 5 ft depth.

To receive a blue band and enjoy free swim in the large pool, campers need to swim the length of that pool, tread water for a minute and retrieve an object on the bottom of the pool at the 7-9 ft depth. The pool staff will continually test swimmers who want to be tested and will work towards building confidence in those who are improving their skills so that they can earn the band of their choice.

Our goal is for every camper to have success and progress in their abilities throughout their time at Nabby. We hope you will see a big improvement in your child’s swimming ability by the end of the summer and we thank our dedicated pool staff who will do their very best to make that happen!