_ As spring is fighting its way here it’s time to, once again, start thinking about summer! Here is the 2012 Idaho Writing Camps Schedule. We are so excited to have the cabin air filled with young writer’s imaginations, words, and creativity once again! Register online and check out the brochure at www.thecabinidaho.org. Call us with any questions- 208.331.8000 CAMPTIMES: 9:00 am – noon = am camps 1:00 – 4:00 pm = pm camps Word Play- Grades 3-4 Engage the five senses and play with language as a path to writing imaginative poems and short stories. You’ll visit nearby parks, the zoo and learn fun activities to jump start your writing. Boise, The Cabin / am or pm / June 25-29, July 9-13, July 16-20, July 23 – 27 Twin Falls, College of Southern Idaho / am / June 11-15 Hailey, The Center / am / August 6-10 Cabin Writers- Grades 5-6 Discover how art, music, nature and your own inner voice lead you to stories and poems that only you can writer. Get ready to experience writing in an art museum, a rose garden or next to the Boise River. Boise, The Cabin / am or pm /June 25-29, July 9-13, July 16-20, July 23-27 Twin Falls, College of Southern Idaho / am or pm / June 11-15 Hailey, The Center / am or pm / August 6-10 Writing Wild: Grades 4-6 and 7-9 A week long adventure in Boise’s best backyards. Grab your pen and take a walk on the wild side. Explore the natural world, your own imagination, and the power of words as you find your own story in the great outdoors. Parents drop-off and pick-up students at the Foothills Learning Center in the Hulls Gulch Reserve. Boise, FoothillsLearningCenter Boise, FoothillsLearningCenter Grades 4-6 / am / Grades 7-9 / am / June 11-15 June 11-15 June 18-22 June 18-22 June 25-29 June 25-29 Picture This- Grades 6-6 and 7-9 Explore the connection between visual art and the written word. Through collage, comics, poems, stories, paintings, and pictures, you will learn to creat work that literally shows and tells. Boise, The Cabin Boise, The Cabin Grades 5-6 / pm / Grades 7-9 / am / July 30-August 3 July 30-August 3 August 6-10 August 6-10 Urban Ink- Grades 7-9 Explore cityscapes, coffee shops, public art, and natural spaces. Professional writers will teach you to create unique characters as well as develop your own writing voice. Boise, The Cabin / am or pm / June 11-15, June 18-22, July 9-13, July 16-20 Twin Falls, College of Southern Idaho / pm / June 11-15 Hailey, The Center / pm / August 6-10 The Workshop- Grades 10-12 Spend two weeks taking your writing to the next level. You’ll learn how to draft, critique, and revise poetry and fiction in a safe, yet challenging environment. Published authors will share the same writing techniques they use themselves. Boise, The Cabin: Am – 2 weeks July 18-29 July 30-August 10 Your Turn- Writing Camp for Adults Ever wish you could go to writing camp? Now you can! Your Turn includes all the elements that make Idaho Writing Camps unique, but geared especially for grown-ups. Spend a week working with a professional writer in a small group setting Write by the river, the Rose Garden, area coffee shops and art galleries. Find out why so many kids come home from camp happy and inspired. Boise, The Cabin / am / July 16-20
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Our Idaho Writing Camps anthology, Words Work Wonders, is back from Caxton Press and looking fabulous! There’s one free copy for every student who attended camps this year, and extra copies are available for $12 each. Stop by The Cabin anytime (Mon-Fri 9-5) to pick them up, or come to our anthology release party at Barnes & Noble this Saturday, December 10:
_We have a whole day of free events planned to go along with the anthology release, featuring a gift wrapping table, three one-hour Writing Workshops at 11am, 1pm and 3pm, and three one-hour Camper Readings at 12pm, 2pm and 4pm. You can order extra copies of the anthology by calling The Cabin at 208.340.2233 and we’ll have them reserved for you at the event. _In addition to the anthology release, December 10 is The Cabin’s Bookfair at Barnes & Noble, where 15% of every purchase will go to The Cabin. Just be sure to have your Cabin vouchers, or ask a volunteer for one at the event. Can’t make it to the store that day? You can make purchases online from December 10-15 by going to BN.com/bookfairs and entering Bookfair ID # 10602829 at checkout.
Now that writing camps are over it’s much quieter here at The Cabin. Branches of the “Poe-tree” stand empty, our sidewalk chalk art is washed away by sprinklers, the fridge shelves are no longer filled to the brim with Cabin water bottles. It’s sad to see this summer go but we had a fantastic time hosting more campers than ever: 432 eager young minds came through our doors, and this record enrollment allowed us to open more classes, hire additional teachers and offer a more diverse range of opportunities for learning and growing with words.
We received very helpful feedback surveys from parents, including some great suggestions for future improvement as well as many glowing responses. Here are a few of those parent testimonials that made us smile.
“My son Jay loved this camp more than any other he has ever taken! We are now writing stories and poems together as a family activity. I am SO IMPRESSED with the impact this camp has had on Jay. Please give a special thanks to Adrian. As a teacher, I appreciate his novel approaches to inspire students.” –John Rosato
“We always find the Log Cabin writing camps motivate our daughter to write, and this carries through the summer. It really inspires her imagination and gives her confidence to write short stories and poetry on her own after camp has been completed!...Log Cabin writing camp gives her the reason, and re-awakens the desire to write. Thank you for having such a great program, with great instructors, who give students the tools to open up that treasure chest of dreams and images, analogies and pretend creatures that oftentimes get locked away or shoved on a shelf at this age!” –Jennifer Brizee
“Ava has been more confident, expressive and passionate since this camp. She actually performed her poem (memorized) at a party the evening after camp was final. She didn’t tell us she was doing it – just jumped on the microphone and started to deliver her poem. It was so great!” –Gina Roberts-Wagner
“My daughter Quinn is still inspired and elated after taking a week long camp. I wouldn't change a thing. She loved every minute and said it is her favorite camp she has ever done.” –Darla McRoberts
“My daughter, who has typically been “afraid” to write, blossomed in the camp. Both instructors were talented and empowering in getting the creative juices flowing and creating a fun, exploratory, and safe environment for the students to experience and articulate thoughts and feelings in a most creative way. Addison was excited to write and share her stories each night after class. She was having so much fun with writing. One of the teachers, (Malia) had them hula during their break times and this had a most positive effect on their learning. It was better than I had imagined and I know that Addison will carry this new confidence and enjoyment of writing into her schoolwork this fall.” –Shelly Halling
We here at The Cabin are frequently amazed by the unusual, out-of-the-box writing activities our camp instructors come up with. From Malia’s hula storytelling lessons to a teaching assistant who came to class wearing a wedding dress for inspiration, this summer brought all sorts of surprises. Perhaps the most magnificently peculiar prop materialized on the final day of the final camp, when instructor Adrian Kien introduced us to Geofferey.
 Geofferey is a dismantled mannequin with three arms, 10 fingers, two mismatched legs, and, thanks to our Picture This campers, a lot of very intriguing marker tattoos.
 Probably the first time these kids have ever written on a fiberglass leg.  It's a mannequin manicure!  This camper might be speculating about why Geofferey's left leg doesn't match.  While Adrian’s campers worked on enhancing Geofferey, Kerri Webster’s Picture This students decorated the path and walls leading down to the Jean B. Wilson Room, welcoming parents, relatives and friends to the gallery show Friday afternoon.
 Follow the school of many-hued jellyfish!  Creating these cardboard picture-window books introduced campers to the concept of upcycling: repurposing materials that might otherwise be discarded and elevating them with the addition of art and writing.
Terra cotta flower pots served as canvas for another art-writing activity.
Thank you, Picture This campers and instructors, for sharing your fascinating creations with us!
At The Cabin’s Picture This camps, students take their storytelling to new levels of creativity by combining words and pictures, using various forms of craft and visual art to inspire and enhance their writing.  Last week, instructor Guisela’s group spent time writing and illustrating their own handmade books.
We love it when campers decorate The Cabin’s outdoor walkways with imaginative chalk art and stories! At the end of camp, rather than holding a public reading like our other writing camps, Picture This students get to put on a gallery show! Parents, friends and relatives are invited to The Cabin’s Jean B. Wilson Room where the walls are decorated with the very best pieces of writing and artwork by each of the campers.
 Hollie McCrea, The Cabin’s summer intern, is the person responsible for writing most of the wonderful posts on this blog so far. She was a fabulous addition to The Cabin staff--helping with camps, the website, this blog, and whatever other random tasks we threw at her--and we’re really going to miss her now that she’s going back to school.
Thank you Hollie! We wish you the best.
This week Idaho Writing Camps are being offered up in Hailey, Idaho at The Center in Hailey, (a part of the Sun Valley Center for the Arts). Kerri and Malia, two of our most experienced teaching-writers, are up there working with Sun Valley's young writers.
Here are some pictures of their time so far! We can't wait to see more pictures and read the great writing that comes out of these camps.
Popsicle poetry is a fun way to get students excited about writing in the summertime. All that is needed for this sweet, summer activity are a few Popsicle sticks and some markers.
On each stick, write down creative words, phrases, and sentences. Remember, they don't have to "go together" at all. In fact, oftentimes the end result is more fun if they don't match up! Decorate as many Popsicle sticks as you wish. Once you've finished, organize them in whatever way you see fit. What appear to be disconnected ideas often come together to form thought provoking, interesting, and silly poetry. Reorganize the Popsicle sticks over and over again to see how many different poems you can make with the same lines.
Take a look at a couple examples that writing instructor Genna's past Word Play camps did as a group:
So, instead of throwing away the sticks after after you finish those tasty summertime treats, save them to create even sweeter Popsicle poetry! Feel free to send us pictures of your special poems once you've finished at julie@thecabinidaho.org and we'll be sure to publish them online! Happy writing!
 Fearless teacher, Malia, chose to take on a combined group of Word Play and Cabin Writers this week and enjoyed every minute of it. Malia did a superb job of finding activities that all her campers would enjoy and learn from.
Malia just has two rules for her campers, which she explains to them on the first day:  1) You have to write.  2) You must use your imagination. The campers agree that these are fair rules for a summer writing camp and have taken advantage of all the fun, inspirational activities and places they've experienced all week long to comply with Malia's requests.
On Monday, campers started off the day playing "Two Truths and a Lie" to jumpstart their wild imaginations. In the game, each person conjurs up three facts about themselves: two that are true and one that's a lie. It's the rest of the group's job to guess which is the lie.
After getting to know each other better the group headed to a dock by the river. On the way they carefully examined their surroundings and worked on describing them using their five senses. The campers shared ideas with the group about what they saw, heard, smelled, touched and, at times, tasted. One student thought that the nearby sprinklers sounded "like elephants on a mudslide!"
A little farther down the Greenbelt, Malia had her campers got up close and personal with a tree (below). Students gazed at, touched, and smelled the green giant while Malia taught them how to use similies as a vehicle for their unique observations. One camper piped up, “The tree smells like guinea pigs three days after they get a bath." Camp is just littered with funny, creative similes!
Once the campers reached their destination, Malia had them take in the different scenery that the Boise River offers.
 Students were asked to make a list of absolutely everything they saw and heard around them. 
They looked at everything from the beautiful cottonwood and catalpa canopy stretching over the dock...
...to the river flowing right in front of (and below) them.
After this observation exercise, Malia explained a poetic form called “lune,” a variant of haiku
that focuses on word count rather than syllable count. Campers wrote three-line poems of 3/5/3 words describing things from their list.
Then it was back to The Cabin where campers wrote "I remember" statements using concrete language to illustrate brief snapshots of memories. One camper remembered “waking up in a hotel room with my sister’s feet in my face.” 
For the last activity of the day, students hung their wonderful memories from the branches of the "Poe-tree" for all to see! Now that numerous groups have added all sorts of poetry to our backyard tree it appears to have leaves of every color of the rainbow. Stop by and check out all the wonderful work these students created for the community!
Camp instructor Malia Collins teaches her students hula moves from her native Hawai'i as part of a unit on storytelling.
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