Summer Plans
We’re full steam ahead with summer planning and registration is open for camp. We will continue working closely with the standards set by the Health Department and the American Camp Association to update our procedures and ensure that we exceed required standards. If there are any changes to our future plans, we will let you know right away, and do our best to serve your needs.
Please feel free to respond to this email with any questions you might have. I will either answer emails myself or connect you with the right person if there’s someone better suited for a particular question than me. Now, for today’s big news…
Trackers Online – NEW TODAY!
In these unprecedented times, our staff has worked around the clock to create outdoor experiences that you can access at home. We are connecting the best of our unique adventure expertise, curriculum, and many years of educational Forest School and interactive camps — with the world of online learning. After an intense and fun two weeks of discovery and testing, we are ready to launch the Trackers Online experience today!
Through interactive webinars, Trackers Teachers and Guides connect kids from all over, helping campers to lead their own learning and, most importantly, having fun with old and new friends.
There are three parts to Trackers Online:
Many parents have expressed the need to continue their child’s academic development in a way that fosters critical and creative thinking. We know that in order to truly engage kids, we need to provide them with a human connection, and something more than just lesson plans on a screen. Our K-12 Forest School classrooms have blended interdisciplinary, hands-on and active outdoor observation with Common Core academic standards. We plan to bring this same experience in education to a part-time online classroom. Students can use their own backyard, a local park, or even a scene out an open window as their personal outdoor lab.
These new digital courses provide options in Reading, Science, and Math that gets kids outside moving their bodies, while also engaging them in creative learning. Trackers Teachers will then guide them to pull these real-world activities into our online classroom. The curriculum meets Common Core academic standards, but is so much fun, students won’t realize they’re “at school.”
Parents have also asked for our camps at home. They want their kids to have productive and engaging social time so that parents get their own work done. Our solution is Trackers Kids. In these interactive camps, kids play and learn with trained Trackers Guides. For example, our online Elves, Wizards & Dragons Camp [LINK] offers an interactive gaming quest. Our Rangers Adventure Camp guides kids in identifying backyard birds, plants, and animals, and even offers more technical skills like knot tying, cooking and woodcarving (with some parental supervision required).
We also know that grown-ups may need to connect. Many of our outdoor skills adult courses will be found online too. You can explore subjects like gardening, birding and botany, bushcraft skills like fire-building without matches, knot-tying, fishing, wild plant identification and more.
Our Future
While we deal with this time of great change and upheaval, one thing is crystal clear — we can’t get through it alone. At Trackers, we can step-up and help right now by doing what we do best: connecting with the community and nature. As we look forward to summer, please join us online for the Backyard Classroom, Trackers Kids and Trackers Skills. And keep checking our website for new classes. Our super creative staff of Teachers and Guides will be adding more in the days ahead.
Once again, feel free to send me an email. Like every other parent, I am living for — and loving — any Zoom playdate I can get.
See you in the Online Classroom,
Molly Deis
Trackers Earth
Founder & Mom