Writing Camp appreciation

The third annual children's Writing Camp, recently held at Future Foundations Family Center in Grants, NM was a success due to the assistance received from local residents who donated their time and talents to help inspire our students to write. They are Rosanne Boyett who focused on editing, Beth Klotz who shared her art and taught the students how to create in water colors, Peggy Lewis whose wonderful imagination introduced fables, Lisa McNeill brought along her passion for music, John Martinez from Rockies shared some of the recycled wares from his shop and Jeff Gunn whose 34 year military career gave the students an opportunity to be reporters.

This year two students, Colin Stoughtenger and Aniston Gibson, were also given an opporunity to be instructors for a day as a reward for their past camp attendance. We also acknowledge, Ejay the rescue dog, who caused more than a few smiles among the students on the last day of the camp as they wrote stories about his first year of life.

Along with all this help we also offered poetry, picture prompts, fiction and non-fiction, card prompts and captioning funny animal pictures. No idea was turned down to encourage the students to write.

The 2014 writing camp committee extend a huge thank you to everyone involved. After it was all over we agreed that the reason the kids like the camp is because there are no rules and we encourage them to be creative and write what makes them happy. The only rule we have ever had is RESPECT. Students are not allowed to make fun of anything another child writes or reads.

Several of the parents thanked us for offering the camp, one adding "it is a lost art". Facilitator John Martinez commented, "Wow I wish there had been something like this when I was a child".

The writing camp committee is looking forward to adding new ideas in 2015 and would appreciate and be grateful for any help offered by the community.

Note:

The previous article was written at the request of the Cibola Beacon editor, Donald Jaramillo, and I was told it would be in todays paper. He apparently could not find the space. So being the resourceful writer that I am I published it myself.