Recess was sledding in the garden and body surfing on the snow banks. In the leather making workshop Little Bears made knife sheaths, bracelets and pouches this week.
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Copper Moon on a full moon day
Little Bear Campers were busy this week!
We had cold windy days, warm thaw days, snowy days and a bright blue sky sunny day. On Thursday we went down our hill to the Hartland Cross Country ski Trails under a bright warm sun. Little Bears were busy on snow shoes or skis touring the flat pastures and hay fields with great snow conditions that made for a terrific morning.
During our afternoons we worked with crafts in the hay barn. Doug led a leather workshop, copper tinkering, mask making, cooking, beading and bow drill fire makers made cooking fires with two simple pieces of cedar wood, dry plant tinder and a string.
Cooking and eating together three times each day was a big part of Little Bear Camp. Each main meal had three courses- appetizer for new taste tests, main meal and fruit desert. We ate outside under the trees in the snow and inside the log cabin. We had many kinds of fires and our special Little Bear cast iron frying pans and dutch oven. New vegetables we tried included jimcama, a nutty white crispy vegetable that is great raw in salads. Radish-egg plant for blue day was sauteed in butter and blue squid noodles with cheese sauce were a big hit.
Monday was Valentines Day, so we ate red pepper and red chili pizza, raspberries, strawberries, and anything red that tastes good! Tuesday was yellow day so we had bananas for snack on crisp bread, chicken noodle soup made with ingredients from or own eggs and chickens. Wednesday we ate Orange foods like butternut squash soup, mandarins and fried eggs up in the camp in the woods over fires.Thursday was blue day- blue corn chips, salsa, guacamole, squid ink colored pasta and shredded purple cabbage slaw with fresh pineapple. Friday was green day so every imaginable vegetable like celery, kale, chunks, fried eggplant and fruit melon salad with yogurt.
The sheep escaped only once and went peacefully back inside after looking around for a few minutes. The Little Bears collected eggs every half hour or so and the 37 hens got lots of cuddles and attention.
On Friday Little Bears were sad that the week was already over and many wished for several more days to play and do projects. Parents were treated to a wild little play about Cinderella made by the girls and poems written by our hardworking and loving intern Lily Adler for each Little Bear about their special gifts.
Thank you Little Bears for a wonderful week! It is our favorite time of year when we have beautiful snow, sun, a cabin full of Little Bears and life in the woods as we wait for spring to come.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Happy Little Bear Campers strutt their stuff!
At Little Bear Camp we started the day watering and feeding the sheep and gathering eggs from the many chckens. At the big leather table Chandrima and Doug helped make real leather moccasins and knife sheathes, pouches and scissor holders from a big natural cow hide Linda brought from Bogota, Columbia. Jeffrey Simpson told a geat story in the woodship in the afternoons and helped Little Bears carve and embellish cool swords.Grace, Jackson, Latham, Sofia, Clay and Clara all made beautiful moccasins which took many hours of hand sticthing and decorating. Ethan, Sofia C., Simon, Nicoya and Kylah used their skills and made many beautiful gifts for others to enjoy things with leather.
The day was spent outside in the woods cooking over a fire, in the big teepee for a story and a water fight on the grass helped when it got hot.
The campers were excited about chicken recess where they helped the young roosters to become tame and friendly birds by holding them often!
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Welcome to Little Bear Log Cabin Camp! Monday July 26th-July 30th

Welcome Little Bears
to Log Cabin Indian Camp!
July 26-30th 9 am - 4 pm
We will soon be welcoming you and 11 other campers for a week of fun and play.
You can choose what you want to do all day long...
Make fire with a bow drill
Make moccasins from leather hides
Sew leather bags, belts books or headbands
Felting paintings and animals
Paper sculpture and paper making from nature
Plays and puppet shows
Teepee building
We will be cooking our food in the woods over fires
Sheep , young pullets and chickens to play with
Woodcrafts and fort building
Clay and pottery crafts
To bring:
Clothes to get dirty and painted in - extra long pants, shorts t-shirt and sneakers. Bug spray if you need it. Maybe sun screen if you use it and a sun hat.
We provide all snacks and lunch
Map quest:
We are located at 6 Vireo View Road, 05089 Windsor, Vermont
Take exit 9 Highway 91 turn right off ramp
Turn at the first left (Rice Road) 1, 7 miles left on Vireo View Road. Look for our Red log cabin with a green roof.
From Taftsville/Quechee Highway 4
Take 12 south to Skunk Hollow Tavern. (It is Right on Brownsville road)
Left on County Road (Hospital sign) Go 1 mile up
Left on Rice Road 1/2 mile down
Right on Vireo view.
802 436 2834 See you soon! Linda and Doug
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, April 19, 2010
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Op-Ed Contributor
Playing to Learn
· New York Times
By SUSAN ENGEL
Published: February 1, 2010
New Marlborough, Mass.
Hollis Duncan
Related
How Has N.C.L.B. Affected Your Teaching?
Holly Epstein Ojalvo asked the question to readers of the Learning Network.
THE Obama administration is planning some big changes to how we measure the success or failure of schools and how we apportion federal money based on those assessments. It’s great that the administration is trying to undertake reforms, but if we want to make sure all children learn, we will need to overhaul the curriculum itself. Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.
In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does. Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on.
So what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all elementary school students mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to learn almost anything in high school and college.
Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals.
In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.
Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual meaning to them — stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons, letters to one another. People write best when they use writing to think and to communicate, rather than to get a good grade.
In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way.
What they shouldn’t do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.
Along the way, teachers should spend time each day having sustained conversations with small groups of children. Such conversations give children a chance to support their views with evidence, change their minds and use questions as a way to learn more.
During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions.
A classroom like this would provide lots of time for children to learn to collaborate with one another, a skill easily as important as math or reading. It takes time and guidance to learn how to get along, to listen to one another and to cooperate. These skills cannot be picked up casually at the corners of the day.
The reforms suggested by the administration on Monday have the potential to help liberate our schools. But they can only do so much. Our success depends on embracing a curriculum focused on essential skills like reading, writing, computation, pattern detection, conversation and collaboration — a curriculum designed to raise children, rather than test scores.
Susan Engel is a senior lecturer in psychology and the director of the teaching program at Williams College.
Playing to Learn
· New York Times
By SUSAN ENGEL
Published: February 1, 2010
New Marlborough, Mass.
Hollis Duncan
Related
How Has N.C.L.B. Affected Your Teaching?
Holly Epstein Ojalvo asked the question to readers of the Learning Network.
THE Obama administration is planning some big changes to how we measure the success or failure of schools and how we apportion federal money based on those assessments. It’s great that the administration is trying to undertake reforms, but if we want to make sure all children learn, we will need to overhaul the curriculum itself. Our current educational approach — and the testing that is driving it — is completely at odds with what scientists understand about how children develop during the elementary school years and has led to a curriculum that is strangling children and teachers alike.
In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does. Simply put, what children need to do in elementary school is not to cram for high school or college, but to develop ways of thinking and behaving that will lead to valuable knowledge and skills later on.
So what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all elementary school students mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to learn almost anything in high school and college.
Imagine, for instance, a third-grade classroom that was free of the laundry list of goals currently harnessing our teachers and students, and that was devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals.
In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.
Children would also spend an hour a day writing things that have actual meaning to them — stories, newspaper articles, captions for cartoons, letters to one another. People write best when they use writing to think and to communicate, rather than to get a good grade.
In our theoretical classroom, children would also spend a short period of time each day practicing computation — adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Once children are proficient in those basics they would be free to turn to other activities that are equally essential for math and science: devising original experiments, observing the natural world and counting things, whether they be words, events or people. These are all activities children naturally love, if given a chance to do them in a genuine way.
What they shouldn’t do is spend tedious hours learning isolated mathematical formulas or memorizing sheets of science facts that are unlikely to matter much in the long run. Scientists know that children learn best by putting experiences together in new ways. They construct knowledge; they don’t swallow it.
Along the way, teachers should spend time each day having sustained conversations with small groups of children. Such conversations give children a chance to support their views with evidence, change their minds and use questions as a way to learn more.
During the school day, there should be extended time for play. Research has shown unequivocally that children learn best when they are interested in the material or activity they are learning. Play — from building contraptions to enacting stories to inventing games — can allow children to satisfy their curiosity about the things that interest them in their own way. It can also help them acquire higher-order thinking skills, like generating testable hypotheses, imagining situations from someone else’s perspective and thinking of alternate solutions.
A classroom like this would provide lots of time for children to learn to collaborate with one another, a skill easily as important as math or reading. It takes time and guidance to learn how to get along, to listen to one another and to cooperate. These skills cannot be picked up casually at the corners of the day.
The reforms suggested by the administration on Monday have the potential to help liberate our schools. But they can only do so much. Our success depends on embracing a curriculum focused on essential skills like reading, writing, computation, pattern detection, conversation and collaboration — a curriculum designed to raise children, rather than test scores.
Susan Engel is a senior lecturer in psychology and the director of the teaching program at Williams College.
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