Elementary Camp: Day 1

I DO NOT APPRECIATE THIS

Talk about a busy day! Elementary Camp is off and running and so are the craft periods! Today I had 6 different day groups of kids. Each group had 12-15 campers and they were alllll different ages. One interesting thing about this particular camp is that it is more than 75% girls. So.... I have that as an advantage during craft time, I suppose!

preparing to spray paint

Little scampers, watching on..

One project that I had to add into my craft schedule was for the campers to work on day group rockets. They were supposed to spray paint four different parts of their rockets and allow them to dry to decorate MORE tomorrow.

So that was activity number 1...

I divided up the groups and numbered them so I can keep track of their projects - let's see how this goes!

Day Group Period 1
Group 1: faith bracelets.
This group is mostly boys and they are very Very social. I have been learning a lot about gaining attention and more importantly KEEPING it from working with each age group. I had a similar experience with the Elementary Mini boys; you had their attention once you got them quiet. However, noise was an issue with most groups today.

Group 2: dragon marionettes
 These were a BIG hit with the littlest campers today. I only had them do a few steps because they wanted to watch their counselors spray paint, but they are doing a great job already!

 I cut down the egg cartons to the correct size and then the girls had to hot glue the 'eye pieces' on to the top today.

 The original plan I found has the eyes sticking out more and glued at an angle, but I thought I should adjust that to make it more little-kid friendly. This was easier for them to understand and the pieces fit onto each other smoothly.

Time to color!

The last step the kids worked on today was to decorate the snout and head of the dragons. Tomorrow we are going to add the googly eyes (YAY) and other head decorations... if we get to that after decorating the rockets.

teacher sample! complete with wings, legs, and pizazz!

Day Group Period 2
Group 3: bead animals
This group had some older kids that wanted a more challenging project. I thought bead animals would be a good choice, and luckily one of the counselors was able to help with his expertise in the bead animal department.

He's been acting as my assistant craft lady - I owe him my sanity some days! I will take some pictures of the bead animals as they take shape :)

Group 4: faith bracelets

This was a group of girls and about 3/4ths of them understood the project haha. Some of them wanted to do a different variation of macrame so they took their string and got to work. Others almost completed the bracelets today and they look really good! My challenge with this group was instructing so many people at once; I had to move from one end of the table to the other to teach!

this is actually one of the boy's bracelets..

 Day Group Period 3
Group 5: drawing/name tags
This group was mostly the boys who did not want to work on the weaving project. They made some really cool graffiti-style name pictures and were making tags for the ends of their beds.

Group 6: weaving
Okay.. so.. if I ever needed to be put in my place, this was the way to do it. Teaching warping to elementary school kids was extremely difficult. After 4 of 5 of them were finished, I was wondering why we weren't just going to do wall hangings instead of pouches?! In fact, I might have some of the kids that didn't finish their looms just do hangings... bleh. I did have a couple of campers who picked up on the pattern for warping right away, though, and then it was Ms. K vs. the clock! Unfortunately, we had to pack up and put everything away before dinner bell... maybe tomorrow we can get everyone back on the same page.

Tomorrow is going to be very.. interesting.. I was told that the kids are to be given the option to decorate their rockets more. So, that basically means I will be pushing my craft plans to Wednesday and having them decorate tomorrow during craft periods. The issue is that the rockets can only be decorated so much, or they are going to be unbalanced and fly funny! I think I will put out paint and brushes and leave it at that.. any other kind of embellishments could throw the rockets off kilter.
This could be a blessing in disguise, though. As much as I wanted to continue with my plans for tomorrow it will be kind of nice to only have ONE media to clean up at the end of each period.
We'll see how it goes.

square knot - over and over and over and over again...

In other news, I taught myself how to gimp! Which sounds awful but really it just means working with plastic lace to make lanyards and bracelets. I only know one stitch but now I can at least build upon that knowledge to practice and become better, right?! These kids are buying me out of house and home with their gimp projects.. maybe we'll do one together at the end of the week IF there is any gimp LEFT!

On that note I am going to sign off. I need to prepare the cabin for the onslaught of paint tomorrow and do a little organizing. Plus I think the other staffers and myself are going to do some leisurely crafting this evening... it's a good way to unwind!

Until next time,
Ms. K