By, Nic Skinner The Maple Leaf students now have an outdoor classroom on Thetford Academy property. I picked this capstone project because it is a nice thing to do for the Maple Leaf day care students to give them a place to play in nature and be themselves. The location that...
By, Tim Gray Thetford Academy has a new and improved trail map. The map includes a new trail that will be made this summer and it is posted on the trail junctions and trailheads. The physical maps that I have remade are more permanent than the last signs that were temporarily...
By Hunter LeFevre The stream table lab tested how organic material affects the river channel. A hypothesis was made that, if organic material is included in a stream table, then the channel will have a more constant path because the substrate will have more weight to create a more clear channel....
By Spencer Williams Thetford Academy has built a new campsite on the CT River in North Haverhill NH. TA students opened up the site and put in a set of stairs to gain better river access and help prevent erosion. We also made some more tent sites, relocated a picnic...
Written by, Hugh O’Donnell In the book The Trap, by John Smelcer, there is a constant back and forth between two parallel stories that unfold side by side. While the story can be read as just a simple, captivating novel of a grandfather stuck in a wolf trap and his grandson’s...
By Tim Gray As I started this experiment the question that I was trying to answer was, what kind of tap works best for sugar maple trees. The data was collected by putting up three different kinds of taps - bucket taps, tubing, and a primitive native American style tap. I thought...
Listen to this great piece on VPR Cafe about the Thetford Outdoor Program and their Maple Sugaring Project. Link...
By, Alex Emerson The Environmental Studies and Outdoor Education course tapped about 100 trees in the State Forest and on Thetford Academy’s property this winter. There were two different processes that we used, buckets and lines. When using buckets you tap a tree and hang the bucket underneath. When using lines...
Thetford Academy students wanted to see if an Igloo or a quinzee makes a better snow shelter. Better was defined as which snow shelter would last longer and hold the most heat. An Igloo is a snow shelter that is made with snow blocks. A quinzee is a big pile...
All of the students in the Thetford Outdoor Program love maple syrup, with the exception of one newcomer to Vermont. So educator Scott Ellis made sure an exploration of all things maple would be part of the curriculum. "If students are interested in something, harness that," said Ellis, 38. "That's what...