Positivity at Chatham

This summer's mantra at International Ivy is Educate, Encourage, Empower.  This week at camp we have seen campers, teachers and counselors working together to help each other grow.  The focus has definitely been on the students and helping them to produce their best work.

Educate

In our sewing class our teacher is educating the class with new techniques with patterns and different materials.

Encourage

Our campers have been encouraging each other during break times with creative ideas and good sportsmanship.

Empower

Our students feel confident in the new skills that they learn in class to complete individual challenges. 

Later on in the week the students will get a chance to visit each others' classes for our sharing showcase.  Stay tuned for pictures and videos!

Week 3 at Chatham!

Today we got off to an exciting start.  We have both new and returning campers and some new classes that are running, like Adventure Quest.  We also have some old favorites like Youngster, Minecraft, Biomedical Engineering and Robotics.

This afternoon during break we had another opportunity to get to know each other and use teamwork to win some relay races.

 It was a great Monday and we saw many happy campers excited to come back tomorrow.

Check out our Flickr Page to see more pictures and videos from this week!

Birthdays, Wacky Hair and Hats!

Greetings from Chatham!  We loved our second Theme Thursday of the summer, which was wacky hair and hat day.

We also had our first birthday celebration of the summer for one of our Youngsters.  We are really working on building a sense of community within the camp and making friends between classes.  

We have our sharing showcase tomorrow and we will have the opportunity to check out each others' classes.  Check back tomorrow for a link to some videos from our showcase!  Until then, click here to see our week two album from Chatham.  

Cheers, 

Kalyna, Colleen, Jon and Mary Claire 

Week One at Chatham

Greetings from Chatham!

This week has flown by!  It has been great to see both returning and brand new campers have such an amazing week.  

Today we had some exciting break times.  This morning we played a kickball tournament for ivy points and to continue working on team building skills.  

During the afternoon break time we were able to enjoy the gorgeous weather to buy lemonade from out Lemonade Stand class.  All of the students were able to discuss the future businesses that they want to start and how this class has helped them.  

In order to see some more pictures of all the great things our campers have done this week, please visit our flickr account here.  Happy camping!

Chatham - End of the Week Wrap-Up

This week at Chatham we had our largest group of campers, but we had so much fun and got so many things done.  One of the best parts of the week was our Friday Lemonade Stand from our Entrepreneurship class.  All of our campers participated in the buying of lemonade, which gave the class a lot of profit and proved helpful for learning how the marketing of a product leads to higher sales.  Please click here to see an animoto slide show of all of the pictures from their sale!

We really emphasized the different parts of STEAM this week - Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics.  From computer programming to Singapore math and cake design we saw many of our campers enjoy interests that they are not usually able to focus on outside of camp. Here is a link to our flickr album for week 5 which showcases snapshots from all of our classes and break time activities.  Stay tuned for week 6 posts starting Monday!

Chatham - Week 5 Highlights

What a beautiful week we're having! We have our biggest group of campers in the morning this week with 62 children and we're having an amazing time. 

Our International Ivy Flickr is loaded with amazing pictures from every location.  This is the link to see all the fun that not only the Chatham campers are having but the campers at other locations as well.  

Today we had Wet Day, which kicks off the week's themed days.  With such hot weather it was the perfect outdoor activity.  Thursday is Wacky Hair Day and Friday we are having both Connect Four and Kickball Tournaments.  Stay tuned for pictures! 

Also, check out our first Animoto for the week.  

Happy First Week!!!

Welcome back to International Ivy Summer Program! We are getting off to a great start here with all of our classes at Chatham.  We are excited to welcome back our returning campers and we are so excited to meet all of our new Ivy friends! 

Here is a link to our Flickr page for the rest of Chatham's first week of pictures.  

Halloween in July at Chatham

Chatham got into the spirit of Theme Thursday by wearing their Halloween costumes to camp today! Campers came dressed as sports players, a cowgirl, a zombie cheerleader, and many more. Our Minecraft teacher Dan came dressed as a Minecraft man, and some students even got to try on his costume. Also some of the female staff dressed up as Miss America contestants each representing a different state. All in all the campers looked BOO-tiful in their costumes!

Wet Day at Chatham

We had a great wet day at Chatham today! Some kids used water guns, refilling them in the bucket so that they could continuously spray other campers. Others used the 200 plus water balloons to toss at each other. The campers also enjoyed spraying the counselors, as you can se in the pictures below! Check out our flickr page to see more action shots from wet day!

  https://www.flickr.com/photos/98941311@N05/sets/72157645572001321/

Products of Handwork and Machine Sewing Workshop

Only two days into the class and these girls are already off to a great start! Today the girls at Chatham taking the Handwork and Machine Sewing Workshop finished their first project. They first got to choose the material they wanted to use, making sure the colors looked good together. Then they used a sewing pattern to choose what type of bag to make. After cutting out the pieces of the pattern, they cut the fabric into the corresponding pieces. Next they sewed it all together and voilà they had professional looking bags! Up next they will be making Denim Dop Bags! 

What I Like the Most About Robotics

What I like most about robotics is the building process - one step at a time, piece by piece and focus.  It takes patience and control and at the end it is done and ends up nice and good!  

The End

 

By:  R.Z. (Chatham)

"The Best Thing About International Ivy"

The best thing about International Ivy is the activities.  My two favorite activities are Minecraft and Robotics! 

The End

 

By: R.Z. (Chatham)

Spontaneous Short Story Writing - By T.P., A.C., and E.W.

On a hot summer day a pig was taking a bubble bath, when suddenly one bubble began to grow in the air. Inside the bubble was a pig fairy. The pig fairy said she will grant the pig three wishes. The pig's first wish was a refrigerator full of ice cream. He was amazed and for his second wish he said he wanted some cool clothes. When he went to his room and looked in his closet he has the world's most amazing clothes ever including designer sunglasses. His third wish was for 1,000 more wishes. He wanted another fairy to grant him double the wished. This way he can share his present with his best friend Ralph. The second fairy said if you get too greedy we'll take away all of your wishes but we will lay a curse on you. And you'll have a rooster head, frog legs, and a horse body. But the pig forgot about what the second fairy pig said and for too greedy. One night when he was sleeping on his new king sized bed, surrounded by toys, and right next to a huge flat-screen TV, he felt something weird tingling in his body. And he started to cough up feathers. When he woke up he found out that is was just a dream. The end!

Chatham Robotics

I am in Robotic life forms.  I love it because we build the most exciting things!  The best thing I thought we did was build a claw striker.  We got to make a claw striker!  Awesome!  S.L.

NXT Robotics Lifeforms - Chatham

I am in the NXT Robotics Lifeforms class.  It is fun building and programming robots that act and look like real animals or lifeforms.  My favorite robot was the clawstriker because it was cool how the claw could find a target and attack it all on its own.  This is a very fun class and there are many cool activities.  Every day we build cool robots and learn many new things.  - A.S.

Chatham Week 1 Youtube Link

You can see a wonderful video made by our counselor, Chloe, about all of the wonderful classes from Week 1.  You can click on the Youtube link here.


Keep checking back for more videos and pictures!

I love singing camp because you get to do a lot of cool things like getting to record your own personal song that you write.  Another thing I like about singing camp is you get ivy points and when you get a prize for 50 ivy points.  Another thing I like are the counselors are very nice too and they are funny.  The only counselor I know is Jaimee because she writes the ivy points for my class and she stays in our room a lot.  I want to come to this camp again because it is super super fun.  
**F.F.** 

A Post From our International Student

One of our international students in the singing class wrote a post.  We are going to miss her terribly!

These days I took two lessons of singing class.  We learned a lot.  And I learned a lot of kinds of music.  Then we should write songs and we are going to sing it.  It's hard for me.  I can't even write a song.  Maybe it's different in the class than from what I imagine.  But it's ok.  I think when I come back to China I will tell m friends about this singing class.  It's so cool!  And I will go back to China on Friday.  And I must be very sad and I will miss here a lot and miss the summer camp a lot. 


**F.C.

I am in singing sensation.  We are having a show.  We are also recording.  I love this class.  We learned about different types of music, and we got to dance with our friends.  

-A.L.

The things we did in singing were great.  WE got to learn more things about singing.  We get to record a song.  We can do it with someone or just do it ourselves.  Then we can perform it in front of our parents.  But we have to record our songs and then we're going to do a group song.  

~C.T.