Another Piece of the Jigsaw: A Little Hiccup and a Wonderful Week 3

As I mentioned in my last post, we've had a few challenges to deal with recently. One of those, we aren't able to host our camp activities at the school. We still haven't exactly figured out why, something to do with governmental changes in education and the school calendar. We are still able to serve breakfast and lunch at the school, but the activities are now being held at a church down the road. It's bit of a logistical hiccup, but we are making it happen!

Monday

Michelle taught the kiddos 2 new songs complete with movements. The camp hit is easily, "Elephants Have Wrinkles." It's a great kids song and even the older kiddos are getting into it. We can frequently hear them singing it quietly (or loudly) when they are working on something independently or when we are walking to the field.

Amanda and I lead 2 different crafts in the main church hall. We made flags representing the counties of the kiddos and volunteers - Kenya, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, Canada and the USA! We also made owl pencil toppers out of felt and googly eyes. Somehow the two crafts morphed and we ended up with some hipster flags.

Tuesday

A day at the field. We taught the kiddos the game, "steal the bacon." It was quite humorous watching Principal Francis join in with the games!

Wednesday

Wednesday we practiced our songs and the dance to "Beat It" in preparation for our mini camp showcase on Friday. We also made catapults. They were pretty simple catapults made out of Popsicle sticks and rubber bands. We gave each kiddo a pompom to try to catapult it into a cup. I think this has been one of my favorite activities of camp. As I have said before, most of their educational experience is theory and fact based. They don't get a lot of hands on practice. It was fun watching them figure out how to turn the catapult so that the pompom flew in the right direction. They moved the base to make the pompom fly higher or lower. Definitely some good STEM learning happening today!

We also made musical instruments out of water bottles. We enlisted the help of all the volunteers in our home stay since June to save 5 liter bottles and smaller water and soda bottles for this activity. The kiddos decorated their drums and shakers and were quite pleased with the results. They were so focused on their creations, you could have heard a pin drop, until the instruments were done and then their was a glorious cacophony of percussion noise in the church!

Thursday

Amanda taught a science lesson about color mixing and we taught the kiddos about the color wheel. They were pretty impressed that all colors can be made from mixing primary colors together. We went to the field for games. When we came back to school for lunch, we had visitors from the volunteer organization we were affiliated with last year. They were really impressed with what we've been doing with the kiddos. It's nice to have validation from others in Kenya outside of the school.

Friday

Last day of camp, or as the kids call it, Camping. We had Little Einsteins with us again. We played games and made volcanoes! Even the adults were impressed with the volcanoes. So many smiles and so much laughter all around. Not only did they wear science gloves, they got to wear goggles!

We ate lunch a bit early so that we could give a little performance for the parents of all the songs and the dance the kiddos have learned over the 3 weeks. They took home their group animal masks (which we had completely forgotten about since we made them week one)! We sent each kiddo and each adult home with a certificate of attendance or appreciation and shed a few tears.