Teamwork Makes the Dream Work!

Here at Chatham our classes have been particularly great at working as teams in classes and at break time.

Learning to work as a team strengthens not only the lessons being learned in class but friendships as well.  Yesterday we played a new game, "5-4-3-2-1" in which students are asked to spontaneously group themselves in a specific number in order to not get eliminated.  There were groups of all ages working together to problem solve and work to make sure as many children as possible could get into groups.  Here are some pictures!

Check out our flickr page here to see more pictures from the week and to see all the great things the children are working on.  

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 Week 6 Wrap-Up

Happy Friday!

Here is a summary of our STEAM oriented classes this week at Chatham.

SCIENCE - Our science classes this week were very unique.  In our Youngster class the students explored the living objects outdoors during their nature walks and our cooking classes learned the chemistry of the way that some foods change through the heating or cooling process.

TECHNOLOGY - The classes this week that were solely focused on technology were our Scratch, Java, 3D and 2D Video Game Creation classes.  They learned several types of coding languages as well as different ways to write programs.  Each student's unique game truly reflected their understanding and passion of the programming.

ENGINEERING - Our Civil Engineering class was able to build different structures in order to test out how much force a building or a bridge can withstand.  They were asked to complete challenges, build assigned buildings and come up with their own unique structures.

ARTS - The culinary arts class did a beautiful job of designing different desserts.  Learning how to express their artistic talents through cooking was a fun thing to do for the cutie cooks especially. Our Animation Film Making class also did some amazing work on their movie.  Their illustrations were very detailed and their filming talents were very impressive!  Our creative writing classes also used their minds to create lovely anthologies of their stories that were written all week.

MATHEMATICS - Our Java class learned a new understanding of numbers and number sense when coding their programs this week.

Our Flickr page and our weekly Animoto have some great pictures of our students exploring new interests.

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 Halloween from Chatham!

This week at  Chatham is flying by!  This week we have an excellent group of fun-loving campers!  Wednesday was our second Wet Day of the summer and Counselor Krystel and Counselor Dave really made it a lot of fun for the kids.

We also have some campers that are seriously dedicated to Halloween!  Chatham has never had so many kids come in costumes as we did this week.  We have everything from a cactus to a few beautiful mermaids, not to mention a "Thing" or two (or three or four!).  We kept our costumes clean and in good shape because of our rainy day activity.  This week we quizzed the Ivy kids about some camp trivia.   Here are the rest of the pictures from Chatham's second week this summer. 

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.  

Having a Great Monday at Chatham!

Week 2 is off to a great start at Chatham! We have some new campers as well as some familiar faces from last week! During morning break, we played name games and each camper got to share interesting facts about themselves!

We are looking forward to having a great second week! Students will take part in classes such as Shark Tank, Minecraft, Robotics, Machinework, Chess, as well as many more exciting classes! Stay tuned for more blog posts and pictures from all of us over in Chatham!

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)

Chatham Youngster Program - Last Day!

Today was the last day of the Youngster Program at Chatham Day School.  Our Youngsters have done so many things, such as yoga, robotics, photography, chess, magic, and all of the break time activities with our other campers. 

We had a special treat today!  The Chatham Day Camp, which is another camp that runs at Chatham Day School, had a petting zoo to celebrate their final day of camp. They allowed our Youngsters to go pet the animals as well.  They met a baby cow, a horse, chicks and bunnies.  We'd like to thank the Chatham Day Camp for the exciting experience! 

Best of luck to all our Youngsters for the rest of the summer and for those attending the program at the Short Hills campus!

"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!

Runway Modeling and Fashion Cosmetics - Chatham

I think this class is super fun.  I learned a lot about make up and modeling.  I hope I get to do this class again.   - E. W. 

If you really like designing and modeling this is a really fun class for you!  Not only do we model but in this class we do lots of makeup and designing.  Not only do you do so many activities in this class but you lean a lot along the way.  I recommend this to everyone and I hope to do this again!  - A.C.

Short Hills Week 3: Brain Training

CLICK HERE for a video of a quick synopsis of what Brain Training is and how to play the Brain Card Game.