Senior environmental educator Sue Lewicki (top, right corner) explains starfish to children attending the first summer camp offered by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission taught in both Spanish and English language.

This year’s Meadowlands Environmental Center’s Hopping Through Habitats program is the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission’s (NJMC) first ever bilingual summer camp. The program has been in existence for several years, but will now be offered in English and Spanish.

Hopping for Habitats is one of about six camps offered by the NJMC this summer. Others include a space camp and a survival camp. Four of the children who attended the bilingual Hopping for Habitats program hailed from South Hackensack. The other two reside in Lodi and Montclair.

Currently, none of the campers reside in the South Bergenite coverage area, but Spanish-speakers are prevalent. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 5,481 people over the age of five, or 8.6 percent of the population, speak Spanish at home in Carlstadt, East Rutherford, Rutherford, Lyndhurst and North Arlington. For the same five towns, 2,002 Spanish speakers, or 3.1 percent of residents over the age of five, reportedly spoke English, but "less than very well."

Above: The children were able to get up close and personal to the starfish during Ocean Wednesday, or Miercoles Marino in Spanish. On Ocean Wednesday, they also learned how to perform salinity tests on brackish water in the Hackensack River. Below: Lewicki watches as campers get to the chance to perform salinity tests on water.

When Jennifer Obando began teaching the week-long camp, she found many of the children compared the flora and fauna they found in the Meadowlands to those found in their countries of origin. "Obviously this is a diverse area," said Lilo Stainton, spokesperson for the commission. "They had experience with interesting parallels to what they are learning about in the Meadowlands District."

Most of the children were born in the mainland United States, but their families hail from Colombia, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. When learning about oceans, the children brought their experiences travelling to their ancestral homes to the lesson, noting the differences in the temperature and color of water in Latin America compared to the Meadowlands. "It’s all about different habitats, so they can extend it from New Jersey to other parts of the world," said Stainton.

It turned out that all of the students signed up for the camp were fluent in English. Five of them spoke Spanish at home while one only spoke limited Spanish. Obando made the most of the situation and decided to promote Spanish translations of the lessons they learned in English to strengthen their Spanish background.

A listener fluent in only one of the two languages would have a hard time keeping up with the bilingual lessons. "It’s very common that you’ll speak to them in Spanish and get an answer in English," said Obando.

In addition to the bilingual program, Hopping for Habitats is offered in English-only for a week in July. Both sessions have the same hands-on lessons, including an introduction to salt marshes on Monday, a trip to Van Saun Park in Paramus on Tuesday with a lesson on world habitats, a lesson about rainforests on Thursday and a lesson about forests on Friday. Friday’s lesson includes an exercise in collecting items found in the forest to make "Earth Art."

The program costs $150 for the week and is held at the new NJMC Center for Environmental and Scientific Education. The new building was built to the U.S. Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, standards. The students also learn how the building works to be energy efficient and environmentally friendly.