Oh my goodness did this week fly by! 11 writers (all girls) joined us in a week filled with LOTS of writing, MANY adventures, and TONS of great conversations! We built a lovely little writing community, and we trekked all over Denver to get inspired for our adventure stories.
We visited the Maps and Atlases room at the Denver Public Library and sat at the Legacy Table (photo below). Hannah, our resource librarian, took extra good care of us, and went above and beyond to answer a question one of our campers had about paper towns in Colorado (what a great question, Melina!) Hannah even wrote about it, and you can check it out here. Thanks, Hannah! We can’t wait to visit the library again soon! And if you haven’t read Paper Towns by John Green, we highly recommend you do.
We went to the Colorado History Center and learned more about the Dust Bowl. Before we went, Sarah, our lead instructor, read excerpts from Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse and we talked about the words Hesse chose to describe the Dust Bowl. We thought about interesting and effective ways we could use words in our own stories to reflect setting and character. The History museum was so much fun and we loved exploring the Denver A to Z exhibit:
Everyday we spent time writing, sharing, and providing constructive feedback for one another. We created our own prompts, including, “Would you rather ____ or _____?” and sometimes the writing from these prompts ended up in our adventure stories. Check back soon for our online anthology!
On Thursday, we went to the Botanic Gardens to see the Chihuly exhibit and oh my goodness wow! We talked about setting a lot this day, and were inspired by his amazing glass sculptures throughout the gardens.
Do you notice that we’re all wearing the same shirt? Annie and her mom, Sarah, made these for us! On the front they say “MDPL” and have a typewriter below, and on the back, they chose individual fonts for us, which, oddly enough, perfectly match our unique personalities. Thank you both for the shirts! They will be treasured for a long time!
On Friday, we chose our favorite excerpt, or excerpts, to read to our family and friends at our Publishing Party that evening. Then, we created books with an excerpt from everyone, plus photos from the week. These book binders will be loved for a very long time, we think. And, we’ll miss each other. It was just too much fun!
We could not have done so much this week without the help of our incredible volunteers. Matt Costa, thank you for being our “go-to” for EVERYTHING! Binding books, picking up tape, taking out the recycling, helping us with our writing, navigating the RTD — THANK YOU! Jeannette Barrow, thank you for joining us on Tuesday and for sharing your love of writing with us! Please come back again soon! Alyssa Duomo, thank you for figuring out an easy way to bind our journals — seriously, that was SO helpful! And thank you for spending the day at the Botanic Gardens with us, too.
Of course, Sarah Anema, our lead instructor, was fabulous! She kept us on track, inspired and challenged us, and made this week one to be remembered. She was funny and fun and gave us more writing time whenever we asked for it. Sarah, THANK YOU! We love you, and so does Denver Writes!
Does this sound like fun? Guess what? There’s one more camp in August! Ages 8-15 (we’ll figure out how to break into smaller, age specific groups) August 11th – 15th. We need 10 people to sign up to have the camp, so if you’re interested, fill out the application (here) and send it or email it by AUGUST 1st!
