Homeschool Art Camp at Clapping Hands Farm in Pittsboro runs from 9:00 am-3:30 pm on THURSDAYS throughout the Fall-Winter-Spring. We define ART broadly and our workshops include visual arts, crafts, music, theater and dance—and also engineering, building, nature exploration, game creation, and more! This beloved program had a joyful restart during the Fall-Winter-Spring of 2023-2024 after a long pandemic pause. We had an extraordinary group of creative, kind, collaborative campers last year and we’re loving our 2024-2025 season!

Below is an overview of our Homeschool Art Camp program and a description of each of our 2024-2025 sessions with dates and pricing!

To learn about our other youth programs, please visit our Fall-Winter-Spring Programs page. [In the process of updating for 2024-2025! Check back soon!]

To learn about our spring break and summer camps, please visit our Spring and Summer Camps page. [Check back in December for our 2025 Spring and Summer Camp schedule! Our 2024 camp season is still up to give you an idea of our range of offerings.]

overview

During the Fall-Winter-Spring of 2024-2025 will have FOUR 6-week sessions of Homeschool Art Camp.

Session #1: Sept 12- Oct 17 with Oct 24 reserved as a weather make-up day
Session #2: Oct. 31- Dec. 12 with Dec. 19 reserved as a weather make up day
Session #3: Jan 9- Feb. 13th with Feb. 20 and 27 reserved as weather make up days
Session #4: March 6, 13, April 3, 10, 17, 24 with May 1 reserved as a weather make up day

Each session will be 6 weeks long with an additional Thursday reserved as a WEATHER MAKE UP DAY. Homeschool Art Camp will run from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. and will include Games, Morning Circle, Morning Workshops in Focus Groups, Lunch, Anything Goes and All Camp Activities in the afternoon, Buddy Group check in, and a Closing Circle.

Each session will have at least two Morning Workshop FOCUS GROUPS; campers CHOOSE one Focus Group to join for the entire 6 week session. Each afternoon we have Anything Goes choice activities which are different each day, are based on campers requests, and will include opportunities to explore BOTH Focus Group topics. In other words if you are interested in BOTH Focus Groups you can sign up for one of them for the morning workshops and still be able to “taste” the other during Anything Goes! .

Homeschool Art Camp serves ages 8-16. We accept older campers who are interested in our Focus Group topics. We accept younger campers on a case by case basis. Parents, Adults and older teens are also needed as Counselors or Volunteers.

Camp at Clapping Hands Farm takes place OUTDOORS for the most part. We generally run camp in all weather conditions unless there is hazardous driving conditions or it is cold AND wet. In other words if it’s raining and 70 degrees, we will have camp. If it’s 30 degrees and not raining we will have camp. But if it’s 40 degrees and raining we will skip camp and use our weather make-up day. During the winter session we will have a heated studio available that can accommodate one group.

camp fees & scholarships

The cost for each 6-week session is $400. There are DISCOUNTS for signing up early and for signing up for multiple sessions; see details below. Clapping Hands Farm has a no one turned away scholarship program; both partial and full scholarships are available.

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session #1: Sept 12-Oct 17 with Oct 24 reserved as a weather make-up day.

Time: 9:00 am-3:30 pm. Ages 8-16.
Camp Fee: $400 (full and partial scholarships available)
Early Bird and Multi-Camp Discounts:

$380 if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) before August 26, 2024
$375/session if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) for BOTH Session #1 and Session #2 before August 26, 2024
$360/session if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) for any THREE sessions before August 26, 2024
$350/session if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) for ALL FOUR sessions before August 26, 2024

FOCUS GROUPS, Session #1:

MUSIC JAM with Alex Nelson

Alex Nelson and the MUSIC JAM Focus Group will be putting all other bands to shame this session with its melodic creativity, ideological harmony and sheer musical genius. You’ve heard of Queen? The music jam focus group is more iconic. You’ve heard of Nirvana? The MJFG is more profound. You’ve heard of The Beatles? The MJFG has way more mania. We just happen to be the coolest people to ever do anything for the joy of making music together. This workshop is open to all skill levels, and all instruments are welcome! If you don’t have an instrument, we have lots to choose from!

At the music jam you can learn how to play your favorite songs, communicate through music, and build your musical, improvisational confidence. There are NO RULES to the music jam, it’s all about having fun and making music together!

Whether you taught yourself how to play; love to write your own songs; know a few chords on the ukulele; are just curious and will be making music for the FIRST TIME; or are an accomplished player who has been taking lessons or studying on your own for years; there’s a place for everyone to join in and jam!

Alex Nelson is a musician, composer, and performer. He teaches guitar, piano, ukulele, and composition, focusing on jazz, classical, folk, rock, pop, and blues styles. Alex has a gift for bringing together a group with a wide range of musical abilities and quickly transforming them into a band!

Alex recently graduated with a Master of Music degree from UNC School of the Arts, and is currently maintaining a studio of students, actively performing across North Carolina, and recording a third studio album.

FUN FASHION – DECORATED & UP-CYCLED CLOTHING and ACCESSORIES for your personal “FIT” and around the house!

If you want to create one of a kind art that doubles as an amazing fashion statement— the FUN FASHION focus group is for you! There are a zillion possibilities! After seeing examples of a big variety of techniques, campers will have choices about their own projects and what we learn as a group. At the end of the session we’ll have a fashion show where campers (or their models) can strut their art for all to see!

Campers will have opportunities to use duct tape, bleach pens, stencils, iron on transfer paper, yarn, glue, fabric paint, spray paint, t-shirts, hand-made rubber stamps, leaves, wool, fabric, colorful threads, beads, and wire!

To make bags, up-cycled clothing, jewelry, hats, rugs, patches, artful mending, wild decorations, and more!

Louise Omoto Kessel is a storyteller, artist, mom to two grown up homeschoolers ages 19 and 23, and the founder and camp director of Clapping Hands Farm! She’s excited to see the fashion show at the end of this session!

FORT FUN(damentals)

This Focus Group will explore FORT FUN(damentals) while building a FORT VILLAGE! In the process campers will learn about styles of building; principles of design and construction; use of tools; and survival shelters. Model scale forts built of sticks will make a fairy-elf sized village and build understanding and plans for bigger forts. Campers will have opportunities to build with different materials such as bamboo, grass, pine needles, vines, sticks, mud, trees, etc! A variety of skills and approaches will be included such as lashing, thatching, weaving, sawing, tying knots, stringing tarps, and more! Consideration for structural integrity and decorative flourishes will be included.

While in the Fort Village, close encounters with trees and bugs and other fauna and flora will be encouraged and used as jumping off points for further investigations as curiosity and group interests lead.

Mary Medvar is a homeschool mom of 3, with a background in environmental education. Mary is passionate about exploring nature and hands-on science; she thoroughly enjoys sharing her excitement and love of nature with others, and is particularly excited to share this with the CHF community. Crafting and community brought Mary to CHF, where she has been a camper, volunteer, and debuted on staff this past summer. Mary is excited to bring her energy, creativity and enthusiasm for exploratory learning to this session!

session #2: Oct 31- Dec 12 with Dec 19 reserved as a weather make up day.

Time: 9:00 am-3:30 pm. Ages 8-16.
Camp Fee: $400 (full and partial scholarships available)
Early Bird and Multi-Camp Discounts:
$380 if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) before Oct 1, 2024

$375/session if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) for BOTH Session #2 and Session #3 before Oct 1, 2024
$360/session if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) for all THREE remaining sessions before Oct 1, 2024

FOCUS GROUPS, session #2:

INVENTING GAMES!

Campers in this Focus Group will play hard, get creative, and INVENT new games!!!

We’ll start by playing our favorite games and games from different part of the world! Then we’ll start thinking about games and their elements; thinking about different kinds of games and understanding how they work and what makes them fun! We will jump off from there to create new games that include our favorite elements.

If you love games! If you love to run around and play! If you like seeing your ideas and your friends’ ideas incorporated into a collaborative process; if testing out new games and then tweaking them till they “work” sounds like fun to you! Please join this playful inventive Focus Group!

Alex Nelson has been coming to camp at Clapping Hands Farm since he was about 10 or 12. Now he’s a professional musician. . . but he still LOVES to play! He’s great at helping campers have fun and create!

MAKING TOYS AND GIFTS!

Each week there will be a featured toy to make or build. Louise has been leading the Toy Making Workshop for our ever popular Toys and Games Camp for over 2 decades and knows how to make a LOT of different toys! Toys that feature sewing, drawing, engineering, physics, building, and more! There are toys that are cute and cuddly, toys that spin and fly, toys that become puzzles, games we can make that require strategy and are fun to play again and again.

Making your own fun and playing with toys you build yourself is the best!

Handmade gifts are extra wonderful. With Kwanzaa, and Winter Holidays approaching, this workshop also assists campers interested in making handmade toys, zawadi, and gifts for family and friends. (But if gift making isn’t your thing, you are free to make toys for your own fun!)

Louise Omoto Kessel is a storyteller, artist, mom to two grown up homeschoolers ages 19 and 23, and the founder and camp director of Clapping Hands Farm! She loves to make things and to teach people skills that allow them to expand their creativity and express themselves by making wonderful things!

session #3: Jan 9- Feb. 13 with Feb. 20 and 27 reserved as weather make up days

Times: 9-3:30. Ages 8-16
Camp Fees: $400 (full and partial scholarships available)
Early Bird and Multi-Camp Discounts:
$380 if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) before Dec. 1, 2024

$375/session if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) for BOTH Session #3 and Session #4 before Dec. 1, 2024

FOCUS GROUPS, session #3

FOCUS GROUP DESCRIPTIONS SESSION #3

CARPENTRY aka Woot Woot Woodworking with Tessie Castillo. Outdoors in the sunshine weather permitting. Under the house if needed for weather.
- Clapping Hands Farm is about fun, creativity, and community. That’s why many structures around camp, including a storage shed and benches, were built by campers themselves! In our Woot Woot Woodworking Focus Group, campers will have fun building picnic tables and benches and signs to be used by present and future campers. Taught by carpenter Tessie Castillo, campers will learn practical, creative skills such as how to recognize quality wood, important safety measures, measuring and marking lumber for our structure designs, attaching wood pieces with bolts and hex screws, and the design considerations in building a structure sturdy enough to endure weather and the energy of enthusiastic adults and kids!
  
  Campers will have the opportunity to use measuring tape, speed squares, socket wrenches, eye & ear protection, impact drivers, sanders, and to work with a variety of types and sizes of wood and fasteners. (NOTE: campers will NOT be operating power saws). Best of all, what we build will be used by Clapping Hands campers for years to come!
  
  Because we will be building things that involve real materials (and real costs) and need to be built to specifications so they will function, campers in this group should expect to follow a plan for construction and work as a team to build things. Past builders camp participants have taken great satisfaction in seeing things they built used every day at camp!
- Tessie Castillo has been part of the Clapping Hands community as a parent to an 11-year-old camper and as a camper herself for 5 years. As a carpenter, she specializes in building outdoor structures such as sheds, benches, porches and tiny homes. She loves to work outside and to inspire others to learn building skills – they come in handy all the time!
EARTH ROMP– Mary Medvar and Jan Burger. Outdoors in fields, forests, and along creeks and ponds weather permitting. Shelter if needed for weather.
- Winter is a magical time to explore Clapping Hands Farm! Ticks, hunters and poison ivy are all taking a rest! There are trails and places nearby that are only fun to adventure in at this time of year!
  
  EARTH ROMP is a playful exploration of all things OUTDOORS. There will be exploring and discovering, finding bugs and encountering animals and plants, AND also running, hiding, climbing and playing.
  
  We might make new trails, plant or find letter boxes, go on a long hike and then play games when we arrive at our destination. We might craft using found and natural objects, make Andy Goldsworthy style outdoor art installations using leafs and rocks and thorns, explore ancient technologies like atlatls. We might track animals, study scat, look for the earliest signs of spring, figure out what bugs are doing when it’s really cold. That’s a lot of possibilities!
  
  This group, for safety reasons, will move together and stick together while playing and exploring; campers and staff will have input into choosing activities as nature inspires and enthusiasm guides.
- Mary Medvar is an environmental educator by training; an enthusiastic pond explorer (always has nets and boots in the back of her car!); a crafter and campfire cooker and a homeschool mom to three wonderful boys. Jan Burger loves to make stuff (puppets, bows and arrows, hats, comix. . . ) and is the king of games!!! He loves and collects games and loves playing so much he just nearly (but not quite) takes games “seriously!” He’s a very fun person to play with!
TABLE GAMES– Louise Omoto Kessel
- Come to this group if you love to try out a new game! We will be learning LOTS of new games and playing old favorites. Games will include strategy games, drawing games, writing games, storytelling games, dice games, card games, indoor party games, games from a variety of cultures and countries, puzzle games, mazes, math games, geography games, “getting to know you” games and a LARGE variety of board games (Louise has quite a collection!) We’ll be exploring so many games! And figuring out which ones we like best! The opportunity to craft traditional games to take home will be included.
  NOTE this group will NOT include role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons we are devoting a whole focus group to that in the March-April session! Also the creating or inventing of new games is not an intended focus.
  
  Participants in this group will have opportunities to play all together, in small groups, pairs, and alone. We will learn some games all together each week; there will be time to choose which game you play each week.
  
  Louise Omoto Kessel is the founder and director of Clapping Hands Farm. She loves to do a LOT of things and is tickled to be taking a break from teaching some kind of arty thing to PLAY as many games as possible with as many campers as possible! Getting to know the campers and counselors at camp is what she enjoys the most.

Table Games will happen indoors, but the other focus groups will be outdoors. On cold days we continue to meet, sometimes making a campfire. On rainy WARM days we still have camp. If it is rainy AND cold we cancel and use one of our weather make up days!

session #4: March 6, 13, April 3, 10, 17, 24 with May 1 reserved as a weather make up day.

Times: 9-3:30/ Ages 8-16
Camp Fees: $400 (full and partial scholarships available)
Early Bird and Multi-Camp Discounts:
$380 if you sign up and pay (or make a payment plan) before Jan 15, 2025.

FOCUS GROUPS, session #4

CREATING COMICS
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS and other ROLE PLAYING GAMES with Alex Nelson
SKILL TOYS for example: tap, juggling, jump roping, hooping, diablo, chatter ring, flower sticks (exact skills and teachers still being confirmed) Recommended for ages 10 and up.

more detailed descriptions coming soon!

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