After our week of camp with the teens last week I was pretty convinced we wouldn't face another week as challenging or as rewarding. At first we were very worried about meeting the needs of older kids but it turned out to be a great challenge that I think we conquered successfully.
This week however is a whole new world with completely new challenges that may be even more difficult than working with the teens. This week we are faced with a challenge of involving the opposite end of the learning continuum. Our camp this week includes a group where the majority of the campers are 7-9 years old. Most of them are young for their age. In order to be successful with this group and helping them grow as DI problem solvers, I have to put on my elementary education teacher hat and apply some early childhood education teaching strategies. Already Ryan and I have had to completely alter our curriculum and try all sorts of new games and challenges that are appropriate develop mentally for this group.
We've learned that before these kids can do performance based challenges and successfully create a skit or performance to go along with the challenges, they have to have a basic understanding of the structure of of a story. Today we plan to make a "beginning, middle, and end" chart with the campers using the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. We are hoping that if we use a story they are all familiar with then they will grasp the idea of story structure.
Not only are we facing teaching/learning challenges, but we are also facing new challenges with the facility we are teaching in. Unfortunately, upstairs in the facility where we're doing camp we don't have any lights. So we've had to learn to teach and the kids have to learn using only light from the few windows that we have up there.
Despite all our new challenges though, we have some very sweet and absolutely precious kiddos this week. They had a blast creating team names and posters yesterday.
The Red TNT Fire Rockets!
The Green Gumdrops! They each drew themselves as a gumdrop.
The Purple Monkeys!
The Orange Sunsets!
The Blue Ocean. They each drew themselves riding a sea animal out of the ocean! So cute!
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