At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.

At HS Kids: Actors, Sculptors, and Cooks students live the English language in week-long full-immersion camps at our home-base in the hills outside Assisi. Subasio National Park, Assisi. They also are exposed to Italian culture, both its countryside traditions and the history and beauty of the Medieval and Roman city of Assisi. Students may elect to do from one to four weeks of HS Kids.

Kids from 7 to 16 years old (Kids are divided into age-appropriate activity groups once they are here) learn English by experiencing the language directly. Students cook, put on plays, garden, make sculptures, write compositions (my HS diary), go on nature walks and cultural trips, draw, swim in the beautiful natural springs near HS, play board games and traditional Italian, American & British outdoors games — all in English, of course! HS Kids teachers are specifically trained to help students engage enthusiastically in HS activities and become fluent in English in the process.

Hs Activities

Mornings

Every morning, kids are divided into 3 groups: actors, sculptors, and cooks. The actors memorize their lines, rehearse, and then perform a short (usually very funny) play every morning — in English, of course! and make their own improvised costumes and props as well. Favorites from past summers have been
: Pandora’s Box (the Greek myth), The Rainbow Fish, Martha, the Magical Dog, Caps for Sale, and many others! Older children sometimes write their own scripts with our theater teacher. HS Kids actors perform outside, before lunch, on the HS lawn.

Our HS Kids cooks make traditional American and Italian cookies,  cakes and desserts every morning, which then become our dessert of the day (after lunch). HS Kids cooks begin by playing games to help them master vocabulary. Then they read the recipe in English, assemble ingredients, and get down to the business of baking, learning and using appropriate phrases and words as they go: Pass me the chocolate, please. Where is the milk? In the fridge, on the second shelf,  etc. After cooking, HS Kids tidy up the kitchen, in English, of course! And then it’s time for a three-course Italian pranzo (or lunch) — a cultural experience for the children, too.

Our HS Kid sculptors first go for a walk with our art teacher in the  fields and woods around HS and collect natural objects they find beautiful — pine cones, leaves, flowers, bark etc. Next, with glue, string and paint, they create their own individual harmonious sculptures.
 Last summer, our HS Kids art teacher had the children study Alexander Calder first (his biography and ideas about nature as an inspiration for his mobiles) and worked with the concepts of balance and asymmetry. Kids often write brief descriptions of their sculptures (in English) when they have finished constructing them.

Before lunch, every HS Kid writes a few sentences in English with the help of HS staff about what his or her morning activity has been. Each kidsthen memorizes what he has written and recites it to the rest of the group at lunch. Older kids typically memorize 5 -6 sentences; our younger students 2 or 3; our youngest 1 or 2. But not always! Sometimes our littlest HS Kids surprise us all and recite whole paragraphs!

Staff speak English at lunch (and all day long!), but kids are free to speak in their own language at meals. Often they are tired out from their English mornings. The atmosphere at HS Kids is relaxed; we want speaking English to be a delight and an adventure! We think it is important for the children to have time to relax, too and to have some free time after lunch to hang out and play with the rest of the HS kids.

Afternoons

Students have a different afternoon activity every day. Mondays: The kids create and bind their own individual and unique (and beautiful!) diaries which they use in our after-dinner activity My HS Diary.  These diaries become very precious to our students. They are a big part of them beginning to feel at home in English and the range of their experiences at HS Kids; they appropriate the language and begin to feel that it is theirs. At our last day party,  kids read excerpts from their diary in English to their parents and the rest of the group ; students often translate what they have read  into their own language for parents who may not have understood. Even our youngest students (our seven year olds),  are proud of their diaries (which they have created themselves, written in  every evening, often with whimsical illustrations) and participate in this last-day party activity with enthusiasm. Tuesdays: group hike to the beautiful nearby spring with waterfalls where we all swim together. On the way to the springs, every student must write at least one sentence about something beautiful they have seen. Students also often make sketches as well, with the help of our art teacher, once we are at the spring. We ride back home after our swim in the HS van.

Wednesdays: HS Kids goes on trips — to Assisi, to Villa Fidelia with its beautiful 18th century gardens, to Bomarzo, the Renaissance park with monster sculptures, or Perugia’s underground Etruscan tombs. We choose our destination based on our group each week. Younger groups often make the shorter excursions to places closer to HS (usually Assisi, which they all love). Some years we focus on medieval Assisi and visit and sketch the castle and the square, some years , Roman Assisi,  we visit the amphitheater, old Roman forum, and beautiful frescoed Roman house in Assisi as Assisi’s wonderful  archaeological museum. Some years, we do both! Students do research and act as tour guides on our trips (in English); even our youngest students must write a few simple sentences.  (This tomb is from the second century b.c. It is an Etruscan tomb. It was for one family). Older students write and memorize whole paragraphs and use more complex, sophisticated language. Hard as it may be to believe (and we were astonished ourselves at first) kids, from the youngest to oldest, embrace this activity with gusto and do an excellent job with it.

Some Wednesdays, instead of going on trips, HS kids stays at home to do projects in the HS garden; a favourite gardening project over the years has been the constructing and then painting of small weeding benches. Each student’s bench is always different from the next; some paint landscapes on their benches, other come up with lively abstract patterns. Our HS art teacher and our HS carpenter run this activity together.

Wednesday evenings, we all make pizza together (an important part of Italian culture, of course) with our wonderful Italian cook, Paola. Everyone is free to invent their own pizza with their  favourite toppings. Sometimes, student pizza are quite unique; sometimes our Italian students prefer to make the traditional pizza of their hometowns. Phrases Wednesday evenings often include: More mozzarella, please! I like pizza with mushrooms or I’d like some pizza with sausages please.  Me, too!

Thursday afternoons: art and poetry workshop: kids draw a painting of a landscape or view around Humanities Spring and then write brief poems about the same view in English. Sometimes our art teacher will show them example of landscape paintings first, from Medieval to Modern as a source of inspiration. We find that doing things in another language makes kids more adventurous, more willing to try new things and experiment!

Evenings at HS Kids

The My HS Diary is a key activity for Hs Kids.  Every evening, after dinner, our Hs Kids teachers, students, and director gather together to work on Kids’ diaries. All students use the past tense when writing about how they have spent their day. The younger students learn the few verbs they need: Today, I baked a cake! It was very good!  Older students actually study the past tense, and learn slowly, sentence by sentence, how to use the simple past and the imperfect in English. It happens naturally; the grammar becomes a part of their lives. Staff student ratio is high (1:3 or 1:4, depending on the week); all students are able to go at their own pace and get a lot of individual attention and encouragement. After diaries, Kids  play card games and outside games with HS staff.

A Typical Day at HS Kids

8:30: everyone wakes up! 9:00 breakfast 9:30- 12:00: Cooking, theater and sculpture labs 12:00: the day’s play is performed — in English! 1:00 lunch with a scrumptious dessert prepared by our HS Kids cooks. Everyone says a sentence or two in English about their morning before lunch begins. 2:30- 4:00: free time 4:00 – 7:00 HS Kids hikes to the springs and goes for a swim! 7:30: dinner 8:30: my diary 9:00: card games, board games, and traditional outdoors games (all in English, of course!) 10:00: bed time for younger campers 10:30: bed time for older campers

HS Kids Method

At Humanities Spring, we believe in applied grammar. That is, we think that the best way for a child between the ages of seven and sixteen to learn the past tense is to have to write a composition about what he or she did that day; or the best way to learn the imperative, is by learning to ask someone to pass you the eggs in another language. Grammar in this way becomes a fragment of life, and a tool for living, rather than an abstraction, simply to be memorized. At HS Kids, students begin to relax and feel at home in English. Slowly, the language becomes a part of their experiences and a permanent part of their lives.

What to Bring (the extras you might not think of…)

1. A set of old clothes you don’t mind getting dirty (very dirty!)  – For Wednesday, our project and painting day
2.  Comfortable walking shoes and slippers to wear inside at HS
3. A bathing suit
4. Colored pencils and drawing paper
5. A pair of long pants and a long-sleeved shirt
6. A warm sweater or summer jacket (Evenings in the hills around Assisi can be cool).
7. The spirit of adventure

Dates and costs Summer 2018

There will be 8 week-long HS Kids sessions in Assisi this summer (and 1 in Rome for older kids from July 21 to July 27). Students may elect to come to from one to four sessions:

• 1st session: 06/16 – 06/21
• 2nd session: 06/23 – 06/28
• 3rd session: 06/30 – 07/05
• 4th session: 07/17 – 07/12
• 5th session: 07/14 – 07/19
• 6th session: 07/21 – 07/26
• 7th session: 07/28 – 08/02
• 8th session: 08/04 – 08/09
• 9th session: 08/11 – 08/16
• 10th session: 08/18 – 08/23
• 11th session: 08/25 – 08/30
• 12th session: 09/01 – 09/06

 

Cost for your first HS Kids session: 550 USD  + 50 USD for the HS association fee. A second session will cost 500 USD, a third 450 USD, a fourth 400 USD. There are discounts for sisters and brothers.   If you have any questions about HS Kids 2019, please feel free to write us with them at info@humanitiesspring.com or to call us at 011-39-075802400 or 011-39- 3206755874 (+ 6 hours Eastern Standard Time). To fill in your HS Kids 2019 enrollment form, please click here.

Advertised on Family Go.eu

 

 

HS KIDS ROME 4° EDITION 2019

For older kids, over 13

7/ 21 – 7/27

This year the HS Kids July sessions in Gubbio will be held at our home-base in Assisi. HS Kids Gubbio will be back in 2020!

 

 

*** Those who wish to pay with PayPal should add a 5 % commission to the amount paid.

 

 

HS MINI-WEEKENDS 2019

 

Who we are…

Humanities Spring has been organizing courses and trips for children, kids and adults (both Italian and American) since 1991. The HS kids courses are held in our home base in Assisi, in the Subasio Montain National Park. HS Kids teachers are gardeners and photographers, amateur cooks, and painters, all committed to the idea of learning through play and hands-on activities. Our director Jane Oliensis, born in NYC, got her degrees at Harvard and Columbia Universities in Classics and English. A professor at Perugia University for several years, she now dedicates herself exclusively to Humanities Spring activities. At the core of our association are our wonderful students, both Italian and American, who often return to HS as young teachers, as will be the case this summer in Assisi at HS Kids.