New Logo for House In the Wood

Northwestern Settlement has changed their logo to reflect the entire breath of programs and services they offer to the Chicago community. All programs and services of the Settlement fall within one of the THREE mission words--Nurture, Educate or Inspire. Each Settlement mission word has its own color. And each program has a small logo to represent them which nestles within the Northwestern Settlement Logo.

House In the Wood is the INSPIRE part of the mission! And our color is orange.

This is our new TEE SHIRT LOGO...watch for it on this year's SUMMER CAMP tee shirts.

We Are In A National Magazine!

Camping Magazine for July/August features House In The Wood...

Take a Look! Click on the Cover.

Outdoor Ed Program Assessments

We have started doing pre and post assessments of our lessons to see if we are doing what we SAY we are doing. We also do post assessments on social emotional learning (SEL) topics like teamwork, responsibility and independence.

The academic assessment results below come from a Chicago Middle School (7th grade) who did one OUTDOOR EDUCATION lesson with us called "Meet the Herps". This lesson met our amphibian and reptile friends at the Valerie Hall Outdoor Education Center. We also talked about animal classification, metamorphosis and adaptation.

While they were here for three days, they also did tree climbing and archery as well as activities designed by their teachers.

Here is the academic assessment for the Meet the Herps lesson.



Here are the results from their SEL assessment.

Feedback from the middle school leadership...House In The Woods was such a magical experience for us this year! 7th grade had a turbulent school year and it was so awesome that we ended the year on a positive note. Thank you for your hospitality, and patience with our group! This was the first end of the year trip that the principle has ever attended and she was deeply impressed. I did strongly recommend that both 6th and 7th grade should experience HITW every year.

Copyright 2016

House In The Wood Honored for Program Excellence by American Camp Association

House In The Wood is proud to announce that its Summer Camp program has been selected for the Eleanor P. Eells Award for Program Excellence. Our Summer Camp program has recently been recognized at the state and regional levels, but this national award from the American Camp Association is an especially high honor.

From ACA:

Eleanor P. Eells Awards for Program Excellence are designed to honor camp programs that:

1. Develop effective, creative responses to the needs of people and/or societal problems using the camp environment,  
2. Encourage continued development of such ideas,
3. Stimulate the exchange of creative ideas, and/or
4. Present to the public examples of positive contributions camp has made on the well being of individuals and society

The award will be presented at the ACA National Convention on February 9, 2016. We at House In The Wood and Northwestern Settlement are very proud to be the recipients of such an honor. We are proud of the Summer Camp program and the people who earned it. The inspiring programming and transformative experiences provided at House In The Wood are a vital component of our mission as an organization. This award strengthens our resolve to always reach higher for our campers.

We thank our staff, volunteers, supporters and the community whose tremendous efforts make Summer Camp possible. This honor is for all of you.

House In The Wood is ACA Accredited

House In The Wood has been accredited by the American Camp Association for many years. But those familiar with the ACA's accreditation process know that this mark of accountability does not last a lifetime; camps must work to keep it! ACA accredited camps are visited during programming once every three years and assessed on an exhaustive battery of guidelines and standards. House In The Wood was visited this past summer and we passed our assessment with flying colors!

The ACA Accreditation standards are focused on the safety and well being of campers, staff and the facilities and environment that make up the camp. Compliance with these standards is what allows House In The Wood to provide the safe, nurturing environment to its campers year after year. There are many standards and they are assessed strictly, so we are proud of the hard work of our staff in keeping House In The Wood in full compliance.