Summer at Hill School brought Susan McCaskey’s Nature Camp filled with eleven adventurous young children. Each day began with a story that inspired a theme for the day.
Monday began with Henry Cole’s (local artist, author, and visitor to Hill) book I Took a Walk. Hill’s 137-acre campus offered the perfect environment to walk around, observe the leaves, flowers, and seed samples. Then an art project of paints, pens, and stamps of leaves, organisms, and shapes completed the day.
Mossy by Jan Brett inspired Tuesday’s adventures as students collected moss and built mini terrariums, colored their own mossy sheet, and cut out and decorated their own Mossy carapace.
Searching for wine berries, salamanders, beetles, and butterflies was the theme for Wednesday, inspired by The Busy Tree by Jennifer Ward. Students also released tadpoles and small frogs into the Hill School pond.
Ladybug Girl and Bumblebee Boy by David Somar and Jacky Davis inspired another trip back to the woods to play in the stream and notice 
new insects such as click beetles and common wood nymph butterflies.
What better way to end the week by reading Butterfly Garden by Margaret McNamara and learning about the life cycle of a butterfly? The children watched the butterflies in the meadow and tried catching them. Each student went home with their own Painted Lady butterfly larva to watch it change from a caterpillar to a butterfly.
What a wonderful week getting outside and exploring the Hill School campus!
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