Julia E's Summer Camp Recap - part 1

Hi! I'm Julia E., an Apprentice Teaching Artist from the Thriving Minds Summer Camp at Conner Elementary. I had a great time working with the kids this summer, so when Big Thought asked me to put together a short recap of my time at Conner, I jumped at the chance! What I'll be posting here are my reflections on the process of creating the play the students performed at their culminating event on July 2nd - and some of the fun daily activities we did. I hope you enjoy it: today I'll post a special two-fer for you from week 2 of Camp!

Tuesday June 16
Going into our second week of Thriving Minds Summer Camp at Conner Elementary, the craziness is beginning to settle. I have a sweet group of four and fifth graders, who get better daily as we get to know each other a little bit more. As of now, I am happy to report that the Thriving Minds Summer Camp is a successful program. Our kids participate in four classes throughout the day: theater, drumming, percussion and rhythm, and visual arts, all of which we hope to compose into an end-of-camp show. Because my kids are the oldest bunch at our campus, they can participate in the more difficult activities; today, they excelled at an improv game called Taxi, individually took turns on the big drum set, successfully put together a cohesive rhythm in percussion class, and created still life paintings in art. Also, as a project, I brought in a long sheet of butcher paper for the kids to write and illustrate what they wanted to be when they grow up – my favorites: Batman, FBI agent, a farm man, a skateboard, and a vegetarian (not to be mistaken with a veterinarian). I will be working on the script for the play tonight!

-Julia E.
ps - Click here to see one of my pictures from Conner!

Friday June 19
The script for our end-of-camp show is officially finished! All last week, my class (the older kids) helped Krystal and me think of characters, setting, and plot for their show, and it has all accumulated into a short and sweet medley of fairytale characters (Dorothy, the Cat in the Hat and Tinkerbelle, just to name a few!), set on Fairytale Island. We read the finished play to the kids yesterday, and they seemed pleased. Now we just have to put it into action! More of the same in terms of activites. The children did blind portraits of each other in art class, or drawings where they couldn’t look down at the paper while drawing. The craziness of drawings, with eyes next to chins and teeth inside the ears, was bizarre enough to get the kids laughing at themselves.

-Julia E.
ps - here are some more Conner Camper pics!