WILTON – Although school isn’t in session for the summer, the Academy Hill School in Wilton is getting good use.

This week, the pitter-patter of 90 pairs of the sneakered feet of young students filled the halls and livened up the classrooms, as the school became a colony for budding artists enrolled in Foothills Summer Arts.

Activities at the arts programs included poetry, creative movement, theater, music and kite-making.

Outside, a gaggle of giddy students rubbed thick crayons over the worn stone of some of the town’s oldest graves, including the headstone that marks the site where Sarah Morse, the first child born in Wilton, was buried after she died at age 23 in 1816.

The task is actually a step toward making poetry as students write reactions to what they saw, tasted, smelled, felt and heard at the cemetery.

“In Memory of/this/Poor Deceased Soul/Who may or may not/Have deserved to die/But all we know is/He did,” student poet Sam Cohen of Farmington wrote in his poem.

While at the graveyard, students learned a bit about history as well.

“Betsy must have been sick or depressed/Because she died young,/How sad/She had a husband/If I were her it would be/Difficult and different then Now/Because they died young/Back then there was/No Medicine,” wrote student Cheyenne Cushing, 9, of Livermore Falls.

Her poem touches on the high mortality rate in the town in the early 1800’s, which students, like Cushing, attributed in their poetry to little medicine and rampant sickness.

Crouched on the floor back inside, 10-year-old Kayleigh Morin, Farmington, worked diligently on coloring a vibrant peace sign circled by green and blue colored spikes on the kite she had built out of trash bags and heavy-stock paper.

“I am enjoying the camp a lot,” she offered, her sneakers, hand painted in a rainbow of colors, tucked beneath her as she pressed the marker hard onto the plastic with a fierce determination, hoping to drain out every last bit of purpled ink. “I am making a lot of new friends and it’s a fun experience, even if you are not that good at art.”

For Morin, the camp is a chance to find her inner Monet and herself. “Whether you are weird, wild or wonderful, people here will respect you,” she says maturely, before rushing to shelve her kite and join the group for an end-of-class meeting.

It’s here in the art classroom, with acidic marker fumes swirling in the air, that students gather to rate a busy day of creative classes by pressing two thumbs up, or down, or at half mast into the air. Mostly, it’s two thumbs way up in a go-see-this-movie kind of way.

As she rushed out of the room, Morin offered a final bit of advice for aspiring artists: “If you want your art to look like real life, go buy a camera. It’s really important to be creative.”

sdepoy@sunjournal.com

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