summer camp has started...week one has, in fact, been put in the books.
seven and eight year-olds are a world away from my high school monkeys, but they are just as challenging. we had three bathroom accidents in four days. lots of lost clothes...you have to spell everything out for these kids...saying, "grab your things" isn't enough. you have to detail it for them: "remember to pick up your back-pack, your towel, your waterbottle, your bathing suit, your shoes, your head..." or they forget it then attempt to shift them blame: "but you didn't tell me to get my eyeball..."
i had the cutest camper on the planet...whenever anyone would ask him "what's up?", his response was "good". i finally got him answering "nothing" by the end of the week. i also taught him to say "two thumbs up like the fonz." he broke that one out in front of our camp director.
boyfriend head didn't think i'd do very well at this little kid thing, but they like me. i'm a little less motherly than the other counselors, but i'm not the babying type.
for example, a little girl walked up to me and held up her arm: "look at this" she tells me. i look. it's a little scrape. minimal blood. my response: "okay. and?" she just stood and stared at me. so, i asked if she wanted a bandaid, and she said yes...so i handed her one.
i am having fun, and surprisingly the smaller monkeys like me even if i am kinda gruff.
week one...down!!
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4 comments:
Congrats on making it a week with the mini-monkeys!!! I was wondering where you've been, because you sure haven't been posting...now I know! Good luck with the next batch of kiddos!
From 1991-99 I ran our town's little league baseball program, and this included working with 8-10 year olds. I really enjoyed it, and I thought it helped me become a better teacher. Anonymous is right--you have to give kids that age directions for everything. The good thing about that is that it really forces you to break things down when you teach them, and I think that becomes helpful when you work with high school kids. For me, it was also great because it helped me to establish very positive relationships with kids I would later be having in my classes as sophomores, juniors, and seniors. There were always some kids who were real problems for other teachers but never became problems for me because of that relationship. For a couple of reasons, I had to give coaching the little kids up, but it's something I still miss.
Welcome to my world. I go through cases and cases of band-aids. I try to get by by telling them their boo-boo needs the air the get better but then I get that that stare...
hehe, I love the littlies! It's very true that everything must be said a million times for them to finally get it. Sometimes it'd take a third time of "remember to pick up your jumper" when some little kid will be like.."oh yeah..my JUMPER" ugghh.
I learnt really quickly to mostly ignore tears and the like. Otherwise you spend your whole day saying "there there". Yeah right, more like "suck it up kid, life keeps on happening, chop chop!". :D
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