News from Pine Mountain!

Monday

Reading camp day 1! The teachers, counselors, and staff have been waiting a long time for Reading Camp 2010 to happen—Sunday afternoon when the campers arrive is always an exciting and satisfying day. This year at Pine Mountain Settlement School we have nine states represented among the staff: Kentucky, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, South Carolina, Illinois, and Florida. What an exciting expansion from that first experimental year at the Cathedral Domain when we had little more than twenty campers. The national Episcopal Church has taken notice of the exciting work we do—Reading Camp now takes place in several states and even in other countries!

Arrival day went very smoothly yesterday and for the most part exactly as planned…check in, see the nurse, reading evaluation, make a name tag, playtime...42 campers. That means that every camper who registered showed up. Unlike last year, Sunday was a beautiful day. Not too hot and not too wet. We weren’t so lucky this morning—sleepy campers woke to a very misty morning and by ten o’clock we were under a downpour. That’s not completely unexpected; after all we are in the mountains.

The campers woke up at 7:30 this morning and got to breakfast right on time at 8:15 (that’s a good omen for the week!). After breakfast they headed to the learning centers where they will work with our teachers on reading and writing skills. On the first morning that doesn’t always sound so fun to the kids but they’ll find out soon that what we do is nothing like the school they are used to. Our student to staff ratio is excellent this year so every child has a good chance of receiving one-on-one time with a teacher every day.

Our camp theme this year at Pine Mountain is “Around the World.” Every day the morning snack will be based on the food of a different country. From Morocco we’ll have couscous. From Britain we’ll have cucumber sandwiches. From Italy we’ll have melon wrapped in “prosciutto” ham. From Mexico it will be black bean salsa and tortilla chips and from the Mediterranean it will be hummus and vegetables.

After learning center time the kids will have lunch and then head to Environmental Education. They’ll spend the afternoon learning about the plants and animals of Kentucky and Appalachia and how to take care of the beautiful world around us. Throughout the week they might visit the Pine Mountain garden, go on hikes, and investigate our creek.

Every afternoon and evening we’ll simply play. This afternoon (assuming the rain stops) we’ll play water games. In keeping with our international theme, on other days the kids will do Origami paper art and Irish Dance with camp directors Leslie and Allison. We will also play games, tell stories, watch an international movie, and Friday night, make s’mores (you can’t have camp without s’mores).

Every night at bedtime a teacher will visit each room to read a bedtime story. This year the kids will hear different versions of the Cinderella story from all over the world. By midweek the campers will be exhausted and fall asleep pretty quickly after lights out.

We are all very excited about the busy week ahead of us. Come back tomorrow for a camp update and some quotes from the kids!