A bit of a crazy week

Well as I'm sure you've all seen, it's been a bit of a crazy week. Thankfully I was in a safe place during all of the events. I was at camp in Plymouth all week. I was working a weekend event and I was working for camp for the week. The weekend event entailed putting up platform tents through out the property. It was a good workout. I also helped in the kitchen at meals. On Monday, since I had the day off, I went to plimouth plantation. It's a replica of the area where the pilgrims first landed.  It was pretty cool and interesting to learn about the dynamic between the native Americans and the pilgrims. When we got back we learned about the bombings. We still pressed forward and jumped into our week of camp. On Tuesday we had create it day, Wednesday was fitness day, Thursday was all about science, and Friday was supposed to be mystery day. I did both teaching and counseling. On tuesday I was counseling for K-3 students! On friday morning at 6:30 am our boss called and said we were canceling camp and needed to start calling parents. It was a bit of a stressful beginning. One of the other camps associated with Girl Scouts were put into lockdown and stuck at camp most of the day. It was a day spent listening to the radio and hoping it would be over soon. We also found out the second suspect was a student at the school at which Retha lives. Her husband and her dog were evacuated and had to come stay with us for the weekend.

Thankfully my weekend has been less stressful and more relaxing. Yesterday I hung out with coworkers watching the red socks game. Today I went to purgatory chasm, which is a bunch of  rocky hills and caves you hike through, and mystic aquarium. It was awesome!

This week I'll be teaching at hilltop. We have 125 6th graders coming. I'm teaching camouflage, megastructures, shark dissection, jelly belly ology, and soccer all digestion. It should be fun times!

Surprise your Teaching!

As I said last week, I thought that I would be an extra helper for this past week. I was wrong! I received a phone call, at 10:30 Sunday night, from the person I worked for in the fall saying they needed me to teach there this week. The week was good but long. The teachers from the school wanted there to be programming from 7:45am-9:30pm. (Usually we end our nights at 9.) Thankfully I had a very good field group. I ended up teaching megastructures, jelly-belly-ology, cultural fair, pigeon dissection (GROSS!!), and egg drop. Egg Drop is a physics class where the children have to create a mechanism to keep an egg safe. Their mechanism is dropped from a 2 story building. All the classes were pretty cool, with the exception of pigeon dissection. I only taught that class because I was asked too. Also, megastructures was a mega-fail this week. Because I had signed up for classes the day the kids arrived, I didn't have time to go check the amount of newspapers the site had. I found out as I was teaching class that there were not enough. Thankfully we had enough to build a small structure, and the kids enjoyed it.

On Wednesday we had our underground railroad simulation with the kids. I was signed up to play the role of a grifter. Basically, when a group of kids came by I tried to get them to give me money. Well I was waiting for the last group to come and I heard an animal in the woods walking around. I figured it was nothing to worry about. A few seconds later I realize its a coyote... and its now growling at me. As I stood there frozen, thinking of an exit plan, the final group showed up. Thankfully they scared away the coyote. It was terrifying! I am not sure what I am doing that keep attracting wildlife!

This week, I am working with the girl scouts. I started on Saturday, and work through until Friday. We had a group here putting up tents this weekend. Starting on Tuesday we have April Vacation Camp. I'm going to be running activities on some days and being a counselor on others. It should be a lot of fun, plus I am going to be meeting some girls that will be at camp this summer.

Today after work, myself and some of the other staff went to Plymouth rock. Thankfully they warned me that it was going to be smaller that I thought. Tomorrow morning I am going to Plymouth Plantation and working on planning summer program :D

As always here are some pictures from the week:

Dancing with the Woods

This past week turned out to be a very good one. We had a small group of catholic 5th and 6th graders come for the week. They were very well behaved and cute. I had 9 children in my field group who loved hiking in the woods. We found slugs, salamanders, frogs, and lots of deer and coyote tracks. We also had an all day field group this week. It is a 41/2 hour field group, instead of two. The kids all make pack out lunches and we eat off in the woods somewhere. This week me and my field group went to the blow downs to hike through. (The blowdowns is a section of property where a tornado went through  in 2011.) All was going well while we hiked through until we got to the bottom of the hill, where it turned into a swamp. At one time or another we all fell in the water attempting to balance on the smallest of branches. Once we found the driest path out we then got lost traveling in the woods. Eventually, after deciding to hike straight, we ran into a trail. The kids all thought it was super fun thankfully. No one was upset at being wet or lost. This week we also had TNL, which is a night where field groups prepare skit and preform them for one another. My filed group made up a skit called "Dancing with the Woods", a play on dancing with the stars. The 3 students that were contestants danced with various types of tree branches. They had one of the teachers in tears from laughing so hard.

Next week we have a group of 84 6th graders coming. I will be a "plus one" for the week. Basically I will not be teaching or leading a field group, but just helping out where help is needed. It should be a good week.

This weekend should be a good one. I am making baked spaghetti for friends tonight, and pannukakku for the staff brunch tomorrow morning.

As always, here are pictures from the week:

This is a picture of the blowdowns.

The week of contagious children

This week we had adorable fourth and fifth graders with us. However, they also brought with them a cold and flu virus. Within my field group of 12 students, 5 of them were sick, and 2 of those children had fevers. We sent 4 children home over the week that had fevers of 103.2, all of whom had one point taken my afternoon class! So needless to say I ended up with a cold by the end of the week. Other than thier germs, the children were very cute and well behaved. On the first day the teachers were worried about one of my children, Andrew. He is unmedicated for his ADHD and makes weird noises. He ended up ring totally awesome! He was super smart and remembered everything he learned in classes. He really liked learning about shelter building, so I had him teach field group one day. He taught us about BLISS, which is an acronym used to teach kids about what a good shelter needs. It stands for blend in with surroundings, low silhouette, insulation, small and secluded. The kids really enjoyed him sharing that with us.

This come week we have 35 5th graders coming. I, thankfully, will be teaching. It's our first 5 day too! I am going to be teaching camoflauge, which is about how animals disguise themselves in the wild, inside out kid, jelly belly ology, shark dissection, and soccer ball digestion. There are only four of the staff tht will be teaching too, so I might play ukulele for the kids each night for quiet sing :)

I hope everyone had a great Easter. I had the joint all to myself this weekend. This morning I even made some pannukakku!

Here are some pics from the week:

To the capital

What a week! It's been both crazy and exciting. Also, very busy, hence the late post. Last week we were supposed to have kids Tuesday through Friday. However, a large snow storm was predicted to hit on Monday night so the school cancelled and decided to come on Wednesday instead. It turned out the weather prediction was wrong and, we only ended up with 4 inches of snow. The kids finally arrived on Wednesday morning and they were all excited to be here. My fellow teachers and I realized quickly the group was going to be a handful! Half of them were loud and crazy, and the other quiet and barley spoke. All of us struggled with our kids and weren't really sure if they were even having a good time. When Friday arrived we were all emotionally drained from the kids. There evaluations were okay, nothing very funny or cute on them.

This week we have 130 adorable 4th and 5th graders! I'm teaching jelly belly ology, shark dissection, soccer ball digestion, and cultural fair. Cultural Fair is a class where you talk about what is culture and teach the kids games from around the world.

As most of you know I had an amazing trip this weekend in Washington DC. We went to the Smithsonian museum of air and space, natural history, and American history. We went to the White House, Washington monument, Vietnam memorial, WW2 memorial, and the Lincoln memorial. We also went to the Holocaust museum and explored the city art sculptures as well. I'm going to be posting pictures throughout the week on Facebook. Finally, as most of you also know, I saw President Barrack Obama fly over my head and land in the backyard of the White House. It was an awesome thing to see. I'm already planning my next trip back!

I hope everyone is doing well! Happy early Easter!

Back in the Habit

It feels good to back in the swing of teaching again. Overall I had a good week! My field group was a little chatty but, mostly awesome. They loved building fires and playing silly little games. ( I was glad that we had so much fun together, the group as a whole were very needy. We had to send a few kids home for fighting. We also had some very clicky girls.) My field group loved building fires so much we did it twice on field group. The second time I had the tell me how to do it and then they got to roast marshmellows and put it between two Oreos. I like to call them smoreos. My group also discovered some large fisher cat prints one day. Hopefully I never run into the animal. They are apparently very vicious if they feel threatened. Thankfully they are independent and don't like humans so they stay away.

This weekend I had a great time celebrating St. Patrick's Day with the staff. We all got together for a  corned beef and cabbage dinner. We spent the evening listening to Irish music and hanging out around the fire. 

This coming week we are being joined by 165 6th graders. I'm going to be teaching jelly-belly-ology, inside out kid, soccer ball digestion, and just plane fun. Soccer ball digestion is a class about the digestive system. I'll simulate digestion by putting a veggie burger and cola inside a zip lock bag, and then kicking that around in a soccer ball. I think it'll be a good week! 

Here are some pictures from this week: 

First Week!

The first week with kid here went great! The kids were a good group to start our season with, they were smart, kind, and funny. This week I was a sleep in, along with Retha. Our job was to be there at night in case the girls needed anything and to plan evening activities. We planned a pj fashion show, natures classroom trivia night, and a crazy hair contest. The girls and teachers loved it. On the last night the girls were very sad they were leaving. We had to spend 45 minutes trying to get more then half of them to stop crying. We ended up just having to let a few of them cry themselves to sleep. That final morning we woke up to a foot of snow! The kids were delayed from leaving. The superintendent of thier district wouldn't let them leave because of the liability of driving in bad weather. We entertained them for an extra two hours with random skits and stories.

This weekend I have spent recuperating. I caught someone's cold last weekend at the Girl Scouts lock in. I've also been preparing for the week to come. I'll be teaching! We have 80 5th graders coming. I'm going to teach grossology, megastructures, shark dissection, and new class. My new class is called just plane fun, it's about the physics of airplanes. In the end the students get to make paper airplanes!

Here are some pictures from the week: