Day 1. Yes, I'm a little late reporting.

It's been an eventful week.
I'm tired and I can't seem to keep up with life in general, which isn't new, but I'm finally sitting down to try to write something.

In the few days I've worked at summer camp I've already figured out why the center director is so keen on trying to hire me full time on a permanent basis. Not that I'm wanting to switch, but as usual, it's hard to find good people who know what they're doing.

Day 1. Kids are loud. The room is really large, but it's been set up with all the shelves and play areas against walls. Making a big runway right through the middle of everything. The staff mostly sits at a table coloring with a few kids while the rest of the children make paper airplanes and run.
And yell.
And chase each other.
Lie on top of each other to wrestle.
Take the few things they do have to play with away from each other.

My station is in the corner of the room. I'm glad I brought so many supplies.
Since our school was closing, there was a lot of stuff being just tossed out. I grabbed a lot of paper products. Enough for this summer and for the next three years or so at my school, actually. Funny, they tossed it because they didn't want to move it, but it's coming to the new building anyway. :-D

I have a lot of my own art supplies, too. Pencils and erasers and pens and drawing books. Markers, scissors. Yarn and string and model magic.

I brought FIVE large rubbermaid totes. Crammed full with every art supply imaginable. It's a good thing I did, because if I'd depended on them to provide any sort of supplies I'd have been screwed.

They left it up to me to decide what sort of activities to provide, and I've tried to at least loosely follow their theme weeks. This coming week they're going to OMSI for their field trip, and although I didn't have the time to save enough household garbage for everyone to make their own robots, I have a few ideas for the kids to make. Rube Goldberg machines, other chain reaction activities, using little wax sticks to make their own marble mazes. I have a bin full of red solo cups to build some towers. Dominoes and wood blocks and string and tape. I have some connectors to use with fun noodles, too. The kids can make structures with those. As an added bonus, one can slice the noodles lengthwise and tape them together and make enormous marble runs, something I've done with most groups I've worked with. I already know it will be a challenge to keep the kids from using them as lances and trying to fight.

I don't know what it is about this organization. Every site I've visited or worked at is dismal. Dull and not enough independent activities for the kids to do. My site was awful the day I walked in. By the time school started, I had turned it into a good place. My kids were very excited to be there when they saw all the things they could choose from.

Yes, they offer art or other group activities, but there are so many kids who don't wish to participate. It makes the job a lot more difficult when the kids don't have a lot of decent choices. This is why they run around and scream and do cartwheels and lie on top of each other.

It's not my site. And although I do walk over to the children who are really out of control and suggest they find another activity, I feel like a hypocrite because there really aren't that many activities for them to do. They're BORED. And about to spend the entire summer indulging in behaviors that are going to do nothing helpful for anyone.

So there aren't a lot of toys. Many of the ones they have are broken or in the case of games, missing pieces. That's really on the staff, if one has the kids check out the games from an adult and the adult checks the game when it's returned, the kids take much better care of it. I always tell my kids that I expect things to be torn or broken on occasion, and if they're not mistreating the item, well then, stuff happens.

But this group? I wouldn't dare give them a game unsupervised. Good grief.

But it's not my site, I don't have to deal with the lack of things during the school year and the behaviors the kids are allowed to indulge in.

I mostly stay with my little mini group(s) and work on our art projects. Last week was painted paper projects, the kids painted gigantic sheets of paper with tempera the first day I was there and we let them dry, then cut them up. I have posted about that project before, and it was a great success with this group.

Also successful? The weaving project with yarn on soda straws. I have to pick up some more variegated yarn, but that's easy enough to do.

But the crazy isn't limited to child behaviors. And I haven't even told you about the stuff that goes on outside on the playground. EVERY time we go out, there are at least three papers filled out for skinned knees or bumped heads. Gahhhhh.

I'll try to catch you up a little more tomorrow. Or rather today, since it's 3 AM. Heartburn has subsided, it's time for me to go back to bed.