Eco Camp at Home

Eco Camp at Home is taking registrations now. You can register right now for July and August sessions.

For over ten years, Happy Dancing Turtle has been home to Eco Camp, week-long day camps focused on coaxing out a curiosity for sustainability and nature in young ones. It is, without a doubt, the highlight of our year. We love interacting with the kids, showing them new things, and just being goofy. Just look:

However, we made the prudent decision to suspend our in-person camping experiences this year, due to the Covid-19 outbreak. Staying distant at this time just makes sense even though it just breaks our hearts to be away from your smiling faces.

However, that does not mean we are going to suspend the mission of getting you an environmentally focused educational curriculum. Oh no! We’re not going to give up that easily.

That’s why we’ve designed our new program that gives you (essentially) the same experience of Eco Camp, only in the comfort and safety of your own home.

Introducing Eco Camp At Home, one our Home Grown Stewards programs. We will deliver to your home a box of activities that will bring the Eco Camp experience to you.

Our eco-counselors will give you the best environmental education…only from a safe distance.

Each morning, campers will have a chance to meet with their camp counselors in a brief Zoom meeting, where they’ll set the theme for the day, do a group activity, and connect with their fellow eco-campers to share what they’ve been working on.

Book Review – “Balanced and Barefoot” and “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather

This week’s blog post is written by Kim Norman, who will be entering her 6th year as an eco-counselor at HDT for this summer.  For more information on Kim you can watch Kim’s introduction video. Head on over to our main page for more information on HDT summer programming, 

Last summer I began a mission to grow in my children a love for the outdoors. We are not adventurous in the realm of camping or hiking, but merely enjoy exploring the world outside our back door. In my seeking, I have come across a handful of books that are on my reading list.

Mason is mastering the balance beam.

Currently, two books have had a profound influence on me. I am a parent, but also an educator. I strive to communicate to parents the importance of unstructured play. I am adjusting my approach to include more physical movement and outdoor play to raise more confident, resilient, and healthy children.

The first title, “Balanced and Barefoot” is written by Angela J. Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist and founder of TimberNook (a nature-based developmental program). She describes, in easy to read terminology, the importance of unstructured, physical play. She moves beyond the playground and focuses on the need for children to challenge their bodies and engage the body and senses. She also examines how bodies grow and how a child’s environment can impact that growth. Active play is critical, and outdoor play is therapeutic.

Home Grown Stewards – Family Activity Kits

This year has brought a lot of changes for everyone. One of the biggest changes here at Happy Dancing Turtle has been the development of our new Home Grown Stewards (HGS) program. Over the next couple of weeks, we will highlight each of the three components of HGS. This week, we’ll start with the Family Activity Kits.

World Environment Day – Teaching Our Children

It should never be understated the importance of raising awareness amongst future generations, our children, of sustainable practices. It is essential that future generations see our planet in a different way than we do, i.e. that they don’t see it as a source from which to extract any needed material to satisfy any slight desire.

Today, Friday, June 5 is World Environment Day. It’s a day that was created to bring political and social awareness to the environment on a global scale. It’s intention is to make aware that our planet is, indeed, all of ours. We are the planet’s caretakers.

Dave taking the time to show some gardening techniques.

Since World Environment Day’s inception, and it’s grand motivation, many great things have been done to help ensure that we can live in symbiosis with our planet. Awareness has risen on the importance of our place in the environment. Worldwide campaigns against deforestation, global warming, food waste, and air pollution have brought these concerns front and center. However, in the last several years, there have been political and commercial agencies that have disregarded these lesson.