Wendy Wagoner of the Chippewa/East Mackinac Conservation District (right) helps Brittany Smith of Cedarville and Chase Ford of Pickford pour hot, colored wax to make sand candles at sixth grade camp Friday, May 5. A new Web site will allow friends and family members to see the annual Sixth Grade Camp experience for themselves. The site provides a place where students can tell, in their own words and pictures, about the two-day camp that took place Thursday, May 4, and Friday, May 5, at Northwoods Christian Camp near Pickford.

"We're integrating nature and technology," said an enthusiastic Bill Sutter, director of Consolidated Community Schools Services, which organizes the camp each year.

Introduced this year, the site has provided a place for students to post images and comments about their experiences at camp, as part of a journaling course, one of more than a dozen activities like stream ecology, canoe and water safety, soil conservation, orienteering, first aid, kite building, clay bead making, and building bat houses. Recreational activities include canoeing, fishing, and hiking.

Sixth grade camp counselor Dennis Malkowski, a senior at Cedarville High School (left), helps students assemble a wooden bat house in the upper level of the Kresge Lodge at Northwoods Christian Camp Friday, May 5. The bat houses are a new activity that was coordinated by Pickford principal Dan Barry and Pickford teacher Joyce Smith. The students who signed up for the sessions built the bat houses for Northwoods Christian Camp, and each school that participated in camp took a bat house back to the school district. Twenty-two houses were created to attract bats to control insects on the heavily wooded camp property.

A total of 160 people took part, including 20 counselors, 10 adults, and 130 sixth grade students from Brimley, Cedarville, DeTour, Drummond Island, Pickford, and Whitefish Township middle schools. For the first time, Ojibway Charter School of the Bay Mills Indian Reservation in Brimley joined other sixth grade students in the two-day camp experience. Mr. Sutter said teachers, administrators, and other local staff volunteer to work at camp over the two days, and some, like Marty Miller of Pickford, even use vacation days to come. Marilynn Crisp, the Pickford Elementary secretary and Mr. Barry volunteered their time in the kitchen, for instance. Mr. Barry offered to cook 250 to 300 burgers "the right way," on outdoor grills Friday afternoon. He estimates that 450 pancakes were cooked for a hungry throng Friday morning.

"The kids are the best I've seen up here," Mr. Barry said. "We have a really good group."

Students are voicing their opinions about camp, and so far, 50 have responded to an online questionnaire link on the Sixth Grade Camp Web site. Les Cheneaux Community Schools technology coordinator Janet Haske is compiling the results and will post them soon. The camp is listed under Programs on the schools Internet s i t e ,http://lescheneaux.eup. k12.mi.us.