Summer Camps

Under the Big Top: For ages 8-14 years. July 11-15, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.  Cost: $325
Co-taught with Stephanie McSherry, Merry Barn Writing Adventures. Get ready to launch your body and brain into a week of balancing, juggling, spinning, reading, writing, creating, collaborating, and performing! Develop circus arts skills (scarf, toss & bounce juggling; object balancing; and plate, diabolo, and flower stick spinning) and explore circus through art, stories, and history. We’ll visit with a circus arts performer, and experiment with mime and clowning techniques, as we explore ways to perform and share our skills. There will be time to sketch, create art, and read and write, as we explore the many facets of circus. At the end of the week, campers will invite friends and family to our own circus showcasing writing, art, and newly acquired circus skills! 

​Stories and Games from Around the World: For ages 8-14 years. August 8-12, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.  Cost: $325
Co-taught with, Stephanie McSherry, Merry Barn Writing Adventures. You don’t need a passport for an international trip this summer.  Just find your way to the Merry Barn! This week will take campers on an exploration of how stories and games connect us all. Campers will experience and write stories and legends, sew storytelling pouches, and make clay objects to use as they tell their own stories. As storytelling artists, we will explore wall art through the ages and paint our own murals. Sit around our fire to savor folktales from across the globe and get inspiration for our own. Challenge yourself with skill toys, board games, and outdoor play. Design and make a new game. A giant wall globe will help us track the places we go. We will share stories and games from our travels at an Open House.

Circus at Spruce Point Inn Resort

Join me along with other vacationing families Saturday mornings for an hour of circus learning! Parents and kids will have opportunities to try your hand at juggling scarves, balancing feathers, spinning plates and more as you have fun learning together. Saturday June 18th through the end of August from 10:30-11:30.     ​

Professional Development For Teachers
August 24, 2022

Join me at the Merry Barn on August 24th for a day devoted to using From Fire to Inspire, a framework of images, sounds, colors, and rhyme, and brain-based teaching practices to explore answers to the following question.
 
"How can we as educators use our understanding of neuroplasticity and neurogenesis to construct the conditions in which our students strive to become masterful engineers, with the desire, motivation, and ability to wire their bodies and brains with all they would most like to know, understand, and be able to do?"
 
The framework:
  • Teaches how the brain learns with the intent of empowering learners
  • Connects all learning across disciplines and grade levels
  • Creates an ongoing practice of goal setting, focus, optimism, self-regulation, grit, and resilience that fosters healthy reflection practice, acceptance, and confidence
  • Helps learners realize their neuroplastic engineering capabilities and develop helpful "wiring" habits
 
The experience will include:
  • Brain-based teaching strategies focused on multiple pathways to memory and brain states
  • Time-efficient, classroom friendly physical activities that provide a way to oxygenate, energize, balance, integrate brains, and embed classroom content for increased learning
  • Tools and resources needed to start building the From Fire to Inspire framework in your classroom
  • Laughter and fun