Tyke Camp

We're into the third week of Tyke-ness. I've continued to be privileged with really excellent helpers. Last week's theme, unintentionally, was "messiness" admittedly one day we did schedule "messy play" but the rest? That was just because we're such lucky ducks.

We've done bunches of cookery...stuff. We made coconut ice (essentially dessicated coconut, sugar, and food colouring), jelly, pretzels, and today we made cheese straws.

Can I suggest something? if you're cooking with children, maybe don't start with something that a) you don't have the correct measuring tools for and b) you don't know what consistency the dough is meant to be. In spite of having no clue what I was doing the cheese straws somehow, miraculously, turned out just fine.

We've started presenting cooking in a TV show style way: we set up a table at the edge of the classroom and cluster them all on the floor around and call them up in pairs to do any stirring or mixing or rolling or what have you. This has been fine so far since most of what we've been making has had a barrier (i.e., a spoon) between the tykes' hands and the food. For the pastry today, though, we were mixing with our fingers which is when something occurred to me: the floor? In the classroom? It is *filthy* and the tykes? sitting on it? Keep putting their HANDS on it. So we had them washing their hands constantly- once so they could touch the dough, again because they couldn't get to the dough without touching the floor again, once more because seriously: don't touch the floor, a further time because do you want to mix the dough? DON'T TOUCH THE FLOOR!, and a final time after their hands were all floury and buttery from the pastry.

Last week with the pretzels I decided that next time I'm going to be a bit more emphatic about what shapes are allowed. No, you don't get to stand at the table for twenty minutes making a snake and then making a ball and than making a snake again- other tykes have not had their turn! Make the first letter of your name and then SIT DOWN. If you want to play with dough? We have some beautiful, perfect, homemade, blue play dough right over there. Yes, it's been there all morning. Right there. On the table. Over there. That table, in the corner. Yes, that one.

You can roll and flatten and roll that dough to your heart's content. But this? This needs to be put into an oven.

Seriously kid.

Right, that blob? That's what you made! Well done!

Now, shoo.

We've done some arts and crafts as well. Lydia brought in this brilliant science activity book so we had Science Day! (you can tell on the weekly schedule which things I have invented and which I've copied and pasted from earlier schedules made by other people. Mine all have exclamation points...) We made air rockets with card, tape, and paper straws. We made climbing lizards (looking a friction don'cha know). We've painted pasta and made pasta necklaces, made ingenious hand print and glitter fish puppets, spinning spiral mobiles, and huge STACKS of colouring in.

This week is quite a bit smaller so I've only got one helper a day instead of two. Because there are so few kids I've started taking specific orders for colouring. It turns out that there are brilliant databases for printable colouring pages. Anything you could possibly want to colour in can be found on the Internet. Thank you, Internet.

I tell you about all of these exciting activities we've been doing (and I haven't even mentioned the trips to the playgrounds and the science museum!) but you know what they get really, really excited about? And play with for literally hours on end? The train set.

Three year olds are awesome.

(PS. "Messy Play" involves covering the tykes in smocks, sitting them down at a table, and putting trays of stuff in front of them. Specifically corn flour mixed with water, shaving foam and glitter, hair gel and glitter, and shaving foam and sand. They liked it okay but I LOVED it. We had a very fastidious set of tykes that day. Most of the corn flour + water mix that ended up on the floor was entirely my fault. As was *all* of the shaving foam that ended up in the tykes' hair and on their faces. I'm so embarrassed...)

The Tykes Have A Summer Holiday

At school we have a summer camp for the tykes. It's actually totally reasonably priced and so we end up with some kids from school, some starting school in the autumn, and some from the area. For this week and the next two I am the head teacher/leader/whatever for the junior camp. It's been great fun.

I kind of keep forgetting that I'm in charge so my two wonderful co-teacher/leader/whatever folks have been a fabulous help. I don't forget in the sense that things don't get done but in the sense that a decision will have to be made like "hey, it's raining and we are scheduled to go to the fountain to go wading...that's not going to work. What should we do instead, Casey?" and I pause for a fraction of a second before thinking "Oh! Right! I'm in charge!"

Camp is pretty unstructured, we've got an activity in the morning, lunch and the great kid switch, and then a trip or activity in the afternoon. It's relaxed and focused on having fun. That being said, I'm so pleased that Linda and Lydia are my assistants the first week because they've got so many excellent ideas and it's great to have such wonderful people to get my sea legs with. Here are some things I've learned so far:

1. Free play time is great, but make sure the supplies and activities available for free play vary each day, otherwise the tykes'll get bored. Even the most fun activities are less fun when they are always there.

2. Tykes enjoy some structure. For instance- the obstacle course we built inside during the rain storm was great fun for about half an hour at which point there needed to be a change- the tykes were going from happy to manic and that's not fun to be around nor to experience yourself. We switched to circle games like duck duck goose and The Farmer in the Dell and that allowed us to extend the activity another half hour. Very good to know and learn for scheduling purposes.

3. Just because the schedule you inherited had lunch at 11am, that doesn't mean it's a good time to have lunch. On Monday the kids a: weren't hungry yet and b: finished lunch so early that we had to tuck another extra activity in there before the moms came to pick the morning kids up. Fortunately we sorted that one out right quick.

4. Songs are an excellent transition activity. And though it is the middle of the summer and muggy as anything- it's always a good time for "5 little snowmen fat" which is the current favourite song amongst this week's tykes. I started singing with the tykes on Tuesday while Linda and Lydia were setting up the cookery activity (yes, "cookery" activity) and it worked so well that I've put it into the schedule.

We made gingerbread men and decorated them. The kids counted the cups of flour, tablespoons of butter, cups of sugar, etc. and then each got a turn to mix the dough with their hands (before the eggs were put in). They rolled the dough and cut the cookies out. It was very successful. We didn't have any proper measure cups/spoons/weights so we were eyeballing the dough and estimating everything. Linda was shaking the powdered ginger in and, because everything reminds me of a song, I started singing "shake shake shake, shake shake shake, shake the ginger, shake the ginger" At about the same time as the tykes started singing along I suddenly realized that the actual song was "Shake Your Booty" by KC and the Sunshine band and maybe that wasn't wholly appropriate...

Today we made paper plate masks and painted them and sprinkled them with glitter. I probably sang something during that too, but I don't remember.