Week 1 Recap

What a week it has been. In so many ways it doesn't feel like a week of camp has gone by. In other ways, it feels like the longest week ever! I'm so glad we've come back for the second running or as Francis calls it, Seasons Two! To be able to see some of the same students now two years older brings so much joy. Only a handful of the students are the same, and we are loving getting to know the new faces. We had 120 registered students (up from 75 in the first running). On the biggest day of the week, our largest number was 108. We are expecting that a few more will show up for week two.

 

Monday

Day one. We had ambitious plans for day one. But it's always good to have more planned then to scramble to fill time. We started about 2 hours late - Kenya time at it's finest. We sorted kids into their camp groups - Lions, Elephants, and Giraffes - and introduced them to the concept of camp. The students had prepared a short "opening ceremony" for us with songs and dancing. One of the "youth" volunteers, "Moses," wants to be a radio personality so he performed a short "segment" for us as well. We decorated reusable bags and did get to know you activities to round out the day!

Tuesday

We took the campers to the local field to play. It was a bit of a hike along a few treacherous paths. We even had to share the road with a heard of cows for a while. At the field Kennedy, one of our volunteers, lead a soccer station. He’s a collegiate player and coaches youth soccer. He even brought jerseys for the kids to wear for the day! The kids absolutely loved it. One thing that always gets a lot of love are the new soccer balls we are able to provide them. 

The other big hit was the parachute. When I taught Elementary PE, the parachute was everyone’s favorite activity. Once the kids got over the confusion and skeptical looks, they had a great time exploring all the different ways to use the parachute. It will have to come out again at the next games day. 

We also brought with us jump (skipping) ropes which are another favorite activity of the kids. Noramy and I got in on the action and promptly remembered why adults stop jump roping...it’s hard. I think I have some working out to do!

 






Wednesday

Today was a much quieter day at camp. We had three stations to rotate through. The theme for camp this year is, "Ourselves, The Community, and the World." So we are trying to intentionally lead activities to fit this theme. Amanda lead mindfulness activities and talked about emotions. She made an anger volcano to talk about managing difficult feelings. So many of our students don't have a lot of coping skills and come from really challenging backgrounds. This area was one of the areas Francis asked us to focus on since it is an area of expertise for Amanda and something I am familiar with from a teaching perspective. 

 

My session was about community service. We discussed ways to help in the community from cleaning up the environment to helping our neighbors out with hanging laundry on the line. We learned from giving a pre-survey on day 1 that a lot of our kids don't feel like they have a lot of power to make a difference in the community. We wanted to start helping our kids feel empowered to not only make a difference in their own lives, but to help others and make their communities stronger. So we bought bio -degradable trash bags and gloves and went out in front of the school to pick up the plastic trash. The difference we made in 3 hours was incredible! I should have taken a before picture, but I didn't. You'll just have to trust me on this one. What I think has the potential to be powerful is that the community saw the students out picking up and having fun beautifying their area. Hopefully others will notice and this can be the beginning of change.

Thursday

If you followed along with the blog during the first running, you learned about Little Einstein’s. Well, they are back with us this year.  Thursday they came to camp with 3 hands on experiments involving baking soda. 

1. Growing Hand

 

2. Exploding Color

 

 

3. Slime - Universal fun for kids and the bane of every adult’s (with kids) existence

Jane came to camp again to lead shampoo making. It’s such a practical skill to have in a community where having a skill in making or creating something to sell really can be the difference between eating or not. We still have to bottle up all the shampoo to send home with the kids (everyone has been saving plastic bottles for several months in preparation for camp)!

Amanda read the book Bucket Filler and started a kindness challenge that will continue into week two. She also shared a video and photos from our sister camp in Canada (which Amanda planned and lead back in July). 

 

You can see the "All About Me" Hands from Monday!

Some of the class 7 and 8 girls.

It was a crazy busy 4 days, but everyone left with full bellies and happy hearts (at least I did).