It has been a looooooong time since I last blogged. Blogging is like exercising, once you get out of a pattern it is really difficult to get back into it. Somehow, something always comes up that needs to get done first. Laundry, errands, phone calls, the third season of Lillehammer on Netflix…hmm. I read somewhere that, …
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 …
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 …
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!).
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.
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!
You know, and I know, and those other people over there know, that I have spoken and written at length about the ups and downs of running a tiny one woman business. Well talk about ups and downs – last week certainly had it’s share of both!
To start off with, I ran the smallest, most minuscule, pea sized camp that I have ever agreed to run.
I generally have between six and ten kids in a camp. However, enrollment was really low for my first week of camp this year- only four children were signed up. So I called a meeting (with myself), decided that four was the absolute minimum amount that I could run a camp with, and happily continued with my planning.
On Monday morning, a parent called to cancel – her child was not art-inclined, it seems. Oh dear – suddenly, I was running something that was very un-camplike. It was the Anticamp.
Three kids.
Any teacher, or parent worth their salt knows that three is definitely not the magic number. Two kids is fun, camaraderie, and hours of secret swapping. Four kids is a close-knit unit, an exercise in team building. Three kids is backstabbing, bloodshed and tears. The problem with three, is that no matter what, one child is always left out. I could see hours of conflict resolution unfolding before me….
…then, to my horror, I discovered that my four year old was running a fever, ack! It will suffice to say, I choked back a tear or two.
Luckily, I have a very supportive husband.
I was actually pleasantly surprised. Yes, it was hard work at times keeping the three kids motivated, and cooperative, but we actually got some great work done, and had a lot of fun along the way. We got to do things that we would not have done with a bigger group. We spent longer on projects, and improvised more with our work. Every afternoon we drove to a local playground, and at the end of each day we had a water fight. The kids actually got on pretty well.
Well, I learnt a lot about all the different ways in which insects can kill, maim, and be killed. I learnt more about Pokemon than I wish to know. I learnt that elementary school kids cheat when playing board games with adults, they call it “leveling the playing field” – hmph. I learnt that a good game of Piggy in the Middle is the best bonding exercise for three kids, and finally, I learnt to always expect for the best.
Let me tell you something about myself. Maybe some of you know this already, but part of my mind is permanently stuck at five years old. I vividly remember being this age – like it was yesterday. I remember my emotions and opinions, I remember what mattered to me the most then, and what upset me the …
I am many things: Art-maker, Story-teller, Cart-pusher, Butt-wiper, Pen-stealer, Tea-lover, Tantrum-soother, List-writer, Number-cruncher, Library-loiterer, Pot-scrubber, Cookie-monster, Lesson-planner, and Head-honcho, to name just a few. If it is labels you are after, then I could go on and on. Some labels are more desirable than others; Story-telling and Library-loitering are two of my happiest activities. However, over …
I apologize for the snow days. Yes, it was in fact my fault, and I won’t do it again. About two weeks ago, I strutted online and proudly announced that I was back on track and ready to get into my work routine again, thus tempting those pesky gods of fate to dump large amounts …
I wanted to call this blog “I’m Back Baby!”, but then settled on a less bragging, more sedate title. Well let’s be honest, I have made that claim more than once over the past year, and have had to eat my words within a month. I do actually try to be steady work-wise. I would …
Oh dear, my blog has fallen onto hard times. Sorry for the long silence…again. I have been quietly industrious for the past few months. Most of it has been child related; some, I’m happy to note, Noctiluna related. I’m slowly starting to carve a routine of sorts out of the buttery chaos that is my …
