Summer Bible Adventure

Our Summer Interns

Shelby Sturgell

Grew up attending children’s ministry of Cedar Grove Church, graduated from Salisbury University, teaches first grade at Tracy’s Elementary School. She serves as a Camp Counselor and Teaching Mentor for our interns.

Kyleigh Adkins

Currently attends South River High school and is in the Career Pathways STEM program which partners local businesses and non-profits with high school students seeking to explore career paths while earning high school credit. She will be developing STEM activities for our campers and serves as our STEM Program Coordinator for the Summer Bible Adventure program.

Courtney Girasole

Grew up in Chesapeake Beach, worked as a nursery at All Saints Parish before graduating Northern High School (2025), attends Salisbury University working toward a Bachelor’s degree in elementary education.

Tori Lawrence 

Currently attends Salisbury University, where she is exploring a future career as either a pediatric occupational therapist or a school counselor. While in college, she has been serving in the nursery at Emmanuel Wesleyan Church and working as an aide at Tender Years of Deale. She will be leading the Sunday School classes at Cedar Grove and curating our library of interest-based books for every age-level.

McKenzie Miller

Currently a rising high school junior at Northern High, she volunteers at Calvert Grace in their Sunday School. She previously volunteered with Camp Heritage in Catonsville, MD. She is enrolled in the Teaching Academy of Maryland.

How A Group of Us Shaped the Summer Curriculum

This summer we have put together a biblical-worldview summer program that will bring children through a Bible Adventure. It begins with the invitation of Jesus to "Follow Me" and "Fish for People" then continues as we glorify the Lord through use of our gifts, talents and serving others. Developed by Pastor Faith and shaped creatively by our own teachers and summer interns, we took careful consideration of our children’s interests and the neighborhood outside our front door. Living here on the water, we can litterally fish from the shore line or from a boat. With our neighbors around to teach us, we can learn about art, sewing, crabbing, fishing and dance. In spring, Tori Lawrence and Pastor Faith prayerfully pulled together the overall themes and scriptures and developed the idea of exploring our neighborhood. We contacted the Deale Historical Society and we began considering the many local fishing and hiking areas that children may enjoy. Finally, these themes combined with the scriptures were developed to include what we know about how children learn best: hands-on discover and play.

We got feedback from parents that they appreciated the time given in previous camps to reading and educational games. We agreed! Let's uphold literacy and academic skills this summer! We contacted the Deale Public Library and will partner in the summer reading program. Tori created small libraries of books for all our classrooms with additional reading materials around the weekly themes. Our school age campers will join the Summer Reading Program on Wednesday June 24. Shelby Sturgell guided our interns Courtney Girasole and McKenzie Miller in planning daily activities, games and options for places to explore and neighbors to visit who raise softshell crabs. Joseph Smith offered to help the kids fish from land at Franklin Manor where he grew up as child. Our summer interns are future educators. McKenzie built out our bible study to include the memory verses that willl connect with our school agers.  Kyleigh Adkins, who is part of the Career Pathways program with Anne Arundel County Public schools worked with her science teacher and Pastor Faith to develop a unique STEM activity for each day that corresponds to an element of the scripture. We are excited to launch this biblical worldview curriculum that we hope will set hearts afire for Christ!