Our History Day Camp enjoyed a week filled with activities, presenters, and twenty-nine active children who were aged 8 through 12. This year focused on Native American and frontier culture. The children enjoyed drumming with Steve Atherton of the Red Arrow Singers, making clay bowls with Rose Ann Wallace, digging for ‘artifacts’ with Andrea Campbell, representing the North Central Chapter #8 of Pennsylvania Archaeology, and listening to chilling ghost stories with Beverley Conrad.
Coordinating this year’s efforts was the inexhaustible Valarie Mowrey who enlisted the help of high school students, the staff, her friends, and an enormous group of talented individuals who loaned their expertise for an hour, two hours, a day, or even five days!
We are grateful to: Valarie Mowrey, coordinator; Rose Ann Wallace, crafts; Scott Atherton, drumming; Tom “Tank” Baird, frontier games; Lucy Henry, dulcimer; Gary Fogelman, flint-napping and atlatl throwing; Reede Holzbauer, flute maker; Joy McCracken, spinning and weaving;Shirley Crawley, butter-making; Sylvia Yorks and Katherine Bowman, artifacts; Beverley Conrad, ghost stories; Steve Weaver, Native American heritage; Docents Joni Decker, Bunny Ditchfield, Linda Phillips, and Sandy Rife; assistants Glen Williams, Pat Damaska, Sabrina Emms, and Jean-Luc Lavallee; Haylee Young, Ashley Rall, students; and parent Valarie Brown. A special thank you to individuals and institutions that provided scholarship monies. No scholarship request was turned down. In addition, we were able to purchase 10 Native American-style drums for use year after year. Money came from the Free & Accepted Masons, Lodge #106, and M&T Bank.
As we know, children are brutally honest, sometimes with spelling errors, but honest, nevertheless! The children were asked to take a survey and rate their favorite activity, another activity they enjoyed; their least favorite activity, and what they didn’t like. They were also asked to make any other comments. And at the end of the survey, we thanked them! Here are the charming results!
Day Camp Survey… and the survey says
- My Favorite activity of Day Camp was:
- Everything
- Ghosts storys
- Drums
- “The Drom” [aged 7]
- Making clay bowels [SIC!][aged 8]
- Rocks
- The trains and the dig
- Clay making
- The ghost stories
- Helping out with everyone and everything
- It is crafe [crafts?][aged 10]
- Making the clay pots
- The trains
- The scary storys
- The wool spinrer speaker
- I liked doing the dig
- Hearing the ghost stories
- The arkeolagal dig [aged 10]
- My favriote activity was the arceoligist dig
- Everything!!!!!
- I enjoyed the drum circle a lot
- Every thing was great. I didn’t have a favorite.
- I also enjoyed:
- Everything
- T-shirts
- The wool
- Snack
- “The sncks” [aged 7]
- Gost storys
- Scary storys
- The archeology dig, and the ghost stories
- The flute player
- Helping with clay pots
- Lince to and a [??][possibly the Native American drumming song?][aged 10]
- Shearing sheep and learning the wool [we did not shear any sheep][aged 12]
- The sheep
- Looking at the trains
- Bown arrow [SIC] & marbles [aged 11)
- The Vicktorian area
- The scary storys
- Writing this
- Finding artifacts
- Clay pots and the fake archeology dig
- The drum circle
- everything!!!!!
- “The archeology dig”
- My Least favorite activity of Day Camp was:
- Diging
- The drums
- Taking the tour
- Seeing the tran
- Gost storys
- The what do you know game
- Nat of Amare iss gams [???]{Native American games][aged 7]
- I didn’t have one
- Nothing it was perfect
- I didn’t Like:
- Leave the camp
- Standing [aged 9]
- Ummmmmmmmmmmmm [aged 10]
- the Duck [the Headless Dog story??][aged 7]
- No thing
- Gost storys
- The circle of life
- The songs and the dancing!
- Sitting all the time [aged 12]
- I liked everything.
- Any other comments:
- I will always remember this week [aged 11]
- I hop I can come again [aged 9]
- It was good!!
- I like trains
- I loved the whole thing [aged 10]
- Thank you for letting me help out with the camp see you next year
- Also the dig was cool but we need to find more things to keep
- Thank you Staff for helping us with are thing [aged 9]
- NO (THANK YOU!)
- The Taber muesum is awsome!
- This was awsome
- Thank you for letting me come here.
- Nope
- Ill come bank
- I enjoyed everything very much
- The staff and conselors are awesome!
- It was really fun tank you.
- No, but thanks for asking [aged 10][This rates as the Museum Director’s favorite comment]
- Thank You!