HUNTINGTON BEACH : Summer Is Time to Go Fly a Kite

Eddie Tapia, 10, stood on the grass outside Oak View Elementary School and grinned broadly as his green kite with a streaming tail of black and green crepe paper sailed far above him.

“This is great!” he said Wednesday as he and about 60 other youngsters launched kites they made this summer at a Project LEARN day camp.

The camp started four years ago to fill a void between the end of summer school in July and the start of school in September, said Jerry Cruz, program coordinator for LEARN, Local Efforts to Address and Reduce Neglect.

Youngsters oohed and aahed as Dave Shenkman of Kites for Kids demonstrated how to fly a high-performance “sport kite” with an eight-foot wing span. Then the children, ages 5 to 13, tried out their own kites, assembled with Shenkman’s guidance.

Not all launches were successful. Some kite strings got tangled, and the city’s usually brisk ocean breeze was on the wane.

“The wind definitely is a key element in how they fly,” Shenkman told Ricky Medrano, 8, whose kite was grounded. Shenkman urged Ricky to try again and yelled “There it goes!” as the kite lifted skyward. “Well, sort of,” he said as the kite drifted back to the grass.

Project LEARN, offered during August at Bienestar Family Center at Oak View Elementary School, is aimed at children from low-income families.

“It’s a combination of education and fun,” said Sandy Sladen, a director of Children’s Bureau of Southern California, a nonprofit organization that sponsors the program.

The camp is offered at no charge and is made possible through community and corporate sponsors. Volunteers, some of them parents, help the instructors.

Children also take trips, such as to an Angels game or the zoo.

Martha Cervantes, whose daughter attends the camp, said it gives youngsters the chance to go places they otherwise might not see and offers parents who can’t afford day care a safe place for their children.

“Parents don’t have time to take them to entertainment, and the parents don’t have the money to take the kids,” she said.