Anti Glitter; Pro Googly Eyes: Elementary Mini Camp/ Science Camp ROCKETS

Yesterday was a BUSY day at camp. I had almost 5 hours of crafts in total with both Elementary Mini and Science Camp. We did a craft about snakes today to introduce Cézanne to the campers. I utilized my camp pet as an incentive to get work done! First I talked to the kids about my snake and some of his traits as a reptile and then more specifically as a Corn snake. They were really interested in learning more about him so they got to work.. kinda. This group was the largest of younger campers I have had to work with and they were NOISY. I had to use a loud teacher voice to get through to these kids and even then the counselors had to interfere and yell even more.. Needless to say, Rockland was really noisy yesterday... and I was doing my best with what I had!
I was working with the kids step by step on the snakes and that seemed to be effective. The issue was the placement of certain kids and their neighbors.. note to self, maintain seating chart with younger kids! I didn't have a choice but to move one of the campers to another table and he was really mad... he didn't want to participate anymore and he even got so frustrated he ripped his snake in half. I fixed it and returned it to him, but he wasn't having it. I let him cool off and by the end of craft time he was back to normal - probably because he wanted to hold the snake!
I wouldn't let the campers hold Cézanne until they answered questions about him, his habitat, diet, etc.. They could come up four at a time and hold him for a minute or so each. They did so great!! One of my favorite parts was when the campers had questions to ask their fellow campers about snakes. They had a lot that I didn't come up with or forgot about! The kids were really interested in learning more about Cézanne and every single camper, and some counselors, got to handle him before they left for lunch. Sometimes I miss being a bio major... anywho, pictures!

a whole table of snakes!

this one has two heads.. with crowns?

this kid used paint to decorate his

hahahha this one is my favorite PRINCESS SNAKE

pretty :)

SO many snakes. Cézanne has lots of friends!

Handing him off... the kids did such a good job!

She told me she could speak snake...

Lots of the kids wanted to take him home

He did a really good job for being afraid of snakes!

He had a big smile on his face until we went to take the picture! haha

haha such a good picture

even the counselors participated!

The craft I am planning tomorrow is Fuse Beads.. we'll see how that goes.. I think they will like it! There are lots of designs, colors, and options to choose from. Or they can make their own designs, too. We'll seeee

Lots of different designs!

Science Camp also built garbage bag kites. They were highly technical to design, and we had to do math equations to make them. I got to make one, too! They flew really well until the wind died.. and the massive thunderstorm arrived to blow through.

hard at work

Smile for science!

So, remember how we were building rockets? Welllll we launched them today! The rest of the pictures will be from the launch. We found the PERFECT window between storms and we even launched into the rim of a thundercloud! Oops..