I tremble ever so slightly as I write this. I don’t know why I get so nervous leading up to camps, I mean, I’m experienced, I’m prepared: I’ve written the curriculum, I have the materials and I know what I’m doing – what’s the big deal??? It’s just me. To be honest, I get nervous about …
Hitting Refresh
It has been waaaay too long since I last blogged, and here’s why: 1: I really haven’t felt like I have much to write about, and I just don’t do that whole ‘writing for the sake of writing’ stuff. It would bore you to death. 2: School is out, my delicious munchkins are home, and when …
10 Tips for Running a Summer Camp
I have been running camps for four years. I’m no veteran, and four years may not seem a very long time, however, in those four years I have learnt a lot, and my camps have grown a lot. This list of tips addresses issues big and small, and I hope it helps any individuals out there …
Art, Books, Kids, and Ideas
Yet another post about books. This time it’s Art books. I’ve been thinking about my upcoming Summer Camps, and which artists I would like to introduce the kids to this year. This is my favorite, most dreamy (and short), world-is-my-oyster stage of lesson planning. This is the sweet spot, when I go to galleries, and libraries, …
What Happened at Spring Camp ?…
And so, the Spring break is over, it blew past me like a brisk April gale force wind (yes, Mother Nature, I am taking a dig at your weather). I thought I would be conscientious, and write my review of the Spring camp on the Saturday after the camp, but it was sunny and beautiful, and there were far …
Preparing For An Art Camp My Way
Spring break is next week, and so is the Noctiluna Spring Camp! As you can imagine, this is a busy week for me. As with most jobs I do, preparing for a camp has it’s own pattern, so here is an insider’s view of what I normally do in the week before I run a camp: Transcendental Lesson Planning Marathon I always leave …
The Luxury of a Full Work Week
The last two weeks have been pretty productive, thanks in part to the lovely Spring-like weather. With no sudden, unexpected snow days, I managed to finish screen-printing all 1 million of my products (Well, it certainly felt like 1 million!). I have also almost finished ironing them all as well. My right bicep is now impressively larger than the …
Towns, Cities, and Home
The last summer camp is done, and I’m off to England for my very well-deserved break (Says who? Says I!) feeling tired, bruised, but incredibly happy. I’m going home. I know, I know, Vienna, Virginia is my hometown now, and it is indeed lovely and welcoming, and I like being here. However, there is always that feeling …
Self Portraits, Sundaes, and Silly Games
Another week of camp has passed, and I’m getting ready for my final, glorious week of teaching before I depart for the UK, and a month of rest and relaxation. I would really like to write a lengthy and descriptive post, like I did last week, but to be honest I’m tired. Knackered – to …
The Value of Playtime
This week’s camp was all about the five senses, so the kids spent a lot of time being hungry (taste, and smell seem to be the all round favorite senses, hands down, no big surprise!).
Work
We looked at Wayne Thiebaud’s heavily textured paintings of cakes and other desserts, and used palette knives to ‘frost’ our own paintings. We learned about Synesthesia, and discussed how artist, Wassily Kandinsky visualized sounds. The kids produced drawings of music, and sat bent over paper furiously scribbling to The White Stripes, Bob Marley, Tchaikovsky, and hot jazz. We learned about color theory and color symbolism. We drew objects, while feeling them, and not looking at them. We gawped at pictures of scarification, and body art, and made a horrible mess working with clay. We made a lot of horrible messes.
The campers loved ‘Lick and Lather’ – Janine Antoni’s chocolate and soap sculptures, and had some amazing insights about her work, which led to a need for an ice cream party (any excuse!). On Friday, we sniffed and identified different scents, and made little scent jars to take home and experiment with.
Yup, a lot happened, and that’s just the art. But, if you ask me, some of the most important learning happened during break times.
Play
On Monday, after a morning of working indoors, I told my students to go out and play in the sunshine – “But, what should we play?” they asked me, “I don’t know, whatever you want to!” I said, “But, we don’t know what to play! they retorted, “This is boring, can you make up a game for us?”.
I refused flatly, and mercilessly threw them out into the wild jungle that is North American suburbia. What happened? Well it wasn’t pretty, there was awkwardness, sulking, whining and a few fights at first, but by the end of the week, the kids were begging for more play time. They made up complex games, hashing out the rules in long, drawn out negotiations, and bonded beautifully. They even organized an end of week performance, made posters by themselves, and practiced relentlessly for it the whole of Friday afternoon.
I think free playtime is really important for kids. Sure, teacher organized play activities have their merits – I often organize games and activities for my students, but I also often step away a lot during break times, and that’s when the good stuff happens.
Who needs a teacher looking over your shoulder all the time? Alone, kids learn to solve problems and counsel one another. Free play fosters the building of skills such as negotiation, team work, conflict resolution, imagination, creativity, and problem posing and solving. My classroom is almost always a better place after a long break. I remember devising so many new games during my long recesses at school, so let’s let our kids get a bit bored this summer, and see where it leads them!