As day 4 of camp winds down I’m blown away by how much these kids have written and how much they’ve published. Our teacher leaders are fabulous!
Today in the morning at camp the campers read “When I was Young in the Mountains” and had a lesson about word choice. Following that they created family crest shields. Campers used poems from the past days on their shields, and they used symbols to represent them and their families. In the morning campers also wrote some feedback for the teachers about what they’ve enjoyed and what they would keep for next year, and what kind of revisions they would have for camp if they were to attend next year. One of my favorite comments was from a student who wrote ” next year have more activity and crafts and a lot less writing!” Isn’t that wonderful?
During lunch students decided to get the games down that I keep in my classroom and play board games while they ate. There were 4 or 5 groups in the room sitting in the floor playing Monopoly, Scrabble, Checkers, and Life Stories. It took me back to my 4th and 5th grade classroom at Mill Creek Grade School where I was a student in Mr. Ronnie Chaffin’s class. His students could earn credits for free minutes, and several of us would bank our free minutes credits until we had a half day or whole day of time in the bank, then spend the entire day playing board games. As we played math and word games we had NO IDEA how much we were learning. Today as I watched the kids in the floor I know I have the next section of my journal to write tonight.
In the afternoon the campers went outside to the baseball field to do some writing, where they created “I Am” poems. On their way back to school they passed the LES playground and spent a few minutes burning off some excess energy. After all, who can pass a playground and NOT swing for a few minutes? They wrote “Bio Poems” and “I Remember” poems in the afternoon, and published by decorating tissue box holders with their wonderful wizardly words.
Tomorrow is the last day of camp, and we’ll be leaving at noon. I can’t believe 4 days have passed so quickly!
