Wonder Camp is in full swing as we head into mid July! The Wonder Camp chant can be heard across the Branksome Hall campus as our Wonders play, experiment, explore, perform and cook up a storm!
Each week at Branksome Hall we have a fun theme to dig into and Wonder Camp strives to incorporate it in everything we do! Week one was all about The Beach and our wonders learned choreography to classic Beach Boys songs. On the final day of the week they performed for each other to wild applause! Our Little Wonders made jelly fish stuffies while our Big Wonders sewed some challenging turtle patterns. They sharpened their culinary skills by learning all about knife safety and how to properly cut up fruit creating delectable fruit salads complete with vanilla mascarpone for the Bigs and coconut whipped topping for the Littles.
When Time Travel week came around our campers learned all about Harry Houdini and his magical ways. They performed magic tricks that astounded even their councilors! The Little Wonders discovered the science of flight by learning all about the Wright Brothers and creating their own paper airplanes to explore aerodynamics. The Big Wonders created levers, learning about Archimedes and all he accomplished for scientific thought. The Little Wonders were challenged to create self-portraits in the style of Frida Kahlo while the Big Wonders took in the everyday sights of camp painting scenes inspired by Brugel.
With Canada Day on July 1, Oh Canada! was of course our week three theme; with an exploration of the landscape, people, animals and culture of our wonderful home and native land. Our culinary workshops this week had everybody’s mouths watering with maple butter, maple crepes and maple snickerdoodles on the menu. We explored the hypothesis: “is there such a thing as too much maple syrup?” The answer was a resounding no! In art the students were inspired by the Canadian artists Emily Carr and the Group of Seven creating paintings that evoked our Canadian landscape. The Little Wonders explored sculpture inspired by the Haida people, getting their hands dirty creating their very own clay creations to take home. In true Canadian fashion the Big Wonders sewed a moose stuffie while the Littles created a loon. Film Canister rockets were a huge hit as they shot into the air, the campers got to pretend that they were just like Chris Hadfield! The Big Wonders learned all about magnetism and learned to navigate around Branksome Hall using a compass!
We can’t believe how quickly this summer is flying by but we’ve still got plenty of time to explore! We hope you’ll join us at Wonder Camp 2019!
