Nashoba Artists

“Expression” has always been encouraged at Nashoba Day whether it be through song, acting, batiking, molding clay, sketching or painting with watercolors. The arts at Nashoba Day are extremely diverse. Campers may choose to focus in a specific class for the week or they may prefer to try only a few different classes at once. Projects are carefully selected to enable a camper to achieve completion within the six-day week. Here you’ll find a pottery studio complete with electric wheels, a woodshop where campers create with soft native pine and a photography studio suited for developing black and white 35mm film. There is a silk-screening studio where campers create colorful t-shirts, a dance studio where staff teach many styles of dance, and a large general arts and crafts building for other fun projects. Some other exciting classes include: basket making, tie dying, puppetry, drawing, paper maché, candle making, creative writing, and our new addition of The Crescent Post – a camper-run weekly intra-camp newsletter! Campers can sign up for a wide range of artistic classes to learn and perfect their crafts. We offer instruction in:

Theatre

Nashoba Day campers perform in one large musical production each four-week session and in One Act plays every Saturday night. The plays are produced on our beautiful indoor and outdoor lighted stages and they generate enthusiasm and excitement throughout the entire camp. Musical productions in recent summers have included The Jungle Book, Seussical, Aladdin, Honk, Mulan, and Willy Wonka. Theater classes include improvisation, mime, stage makeup, lighting, set design, and more! Dances are choreographed by Nashoba Day staff members for each production.

Dance

Nashoba offers a wide range of dance instruction; from modern dance and hip hop to yoga and jazz, our instructors are qualified individuals who choreograph several dances to campers’ favorite songs each week. At the end of the activity week, campers have the opportunity to show off their new moves at our Saturday night Arts Night. Campers are often invited to suggest new dances, and even choreograph their own moves to truly show off their talents!

Music

Nashoba is also excited to be able to offer campers musical instruction in a wide variety of instruments, including, guitar, drums, piano and more in our own “Rock Shack”. Campers have the opportunity to jam with other campers and counselors and even to put together a band to play at Nashobapaloza – our very own, very popular, rock fest! Past camper bands have included Stinky Towels, Portuguese Panda and Sarcastic Love. Campers can “cut an album” or simply record a few songs at the Rock Shack. Check out some audio clips of our bands from previous summers.

Arts & Crafts

In our own, diverse art studio campers can sign up for a variety of activities. Here, campers have participated in activities such as “Leave Your Mark” in which campers come up with their own ideas to respectfully leave their own mark on Camp Nashoba – previous years have created ceramic mosaic wall hangings, quilts, and have even begun to re-paint the interior of our arts and crafts studio to their liking! Other classes campers have the opportunity to take part in include basket weaving, tie dye, friendship bracelet making, still life painting, knitting, sewing, face painting, and more! Campers are free to express themselves and find inner creativity in endless ways with the flexibility of our Arts and Crafts program.

Woodshop

Nashoba’s own woodshop offers classes in whittling, staff making, bird houses, bunk-organizers, paddles, and more! Kids are encouraged to come up with their own designs such as picnic tables, card tables, chests, mail boxes, and themed bird houses. We recently added a Lathe to our shop to offer decorated legs for stools and tables, baseball bats, bowls, drums and more! If your camper can imagine it made out of wood, our staff can help make it happen!

Pottery

Nashoba Day’s Ceramics Teachers are highly qualified individuals with a passion for the art. We have 8 electric powered throwing wheels and even a foot-powered kick wheel that campers can make plates, bowls, coffee mugs and vases to take home! Along with wheel pottery we have hand building classes to really get your hands dirty building animals, mosaics, pot holders, and anything else the imagination dreams up! Once projects have had a chance to dry out, everyone has the opportunity to decorate their masterpieces with glaze before they go into the kiln. Our pottery studio offers a fun and relaxing atmosphere to learn a new craft and take home camper’s creations!

Photography

Nashoba’s very own Photography Hut teaches campers the basics of black and white 35mm film photography – everything from how a camera works to the chemical process of making each photograph. Campers choose which locations on camp to photograph or can even hold their own fashion show! During the printing process campers work together to make beautiful black and white images that they can display in Arts Night, or even crop down to make a post card to send home to the family! Those that wish may participate in the weekly “photo of the week” contest – the winner of which gets their work published in Nashoba’s weekly print newsletter, The Crescent Post!

Creative Arts

Camp Nashoba Day’s “creative arts” bundles together several of our programs including Creative Writing and Poetry, Cooking, and Campfire Skits. Our Writing program, new to Nashoba, is responsible for introducing The Crescent Post to camp. The Crescent Post is a camper-run intra-camp print newsletter that is released every Saturday at dinner. Entries range from camper interviews about what’s going on on camp, poems and entries from our writing classes, camper photos, riddles, cross words, and more! Our Cooking classes are a huge hit! Campers enjoy learning how to make a wide range of delicious treats from home made pickles to banana bread! Campers always make enough to share with the rest of their cabin and are eager to show off their treats! Every Sunday Camp Nashoba heads down the hill to our waterfront for a camp-wide campfire silhouetted by Maine’s beautiful sunsets over Rattlesnake mountain and Crescent Lake. Here Campers and Counselors alike put on skits, sing songs, and tell jokes. Everyone gets involved and sometimes a little wet from Crescent Lake and ornery skits! We even hold a class, run by our theatre department, specifically for top of the line skits for this very occasion! Campers are guided to come up with their own skits and are then helped to refine dialogue and inclusiveness. The product always being entertaining, unique and often hilarious!