Practicum – Play Camp
The free parent practicum that Classical Conversations
offers each summer to their parents and students is one of the best parts about
being a member of a CC community. Every summer, these meetings are held giving parents
the information, encouragement and motivation they will need to continue
homeschooling in the next year in the classical model. The afternoon sessions
also offer the required training needed for the CC tutors who will be leading
the Foundations, Essentials, and Challenge level classes.
A vital piece of these practicums that I have never been a
part of before are the classes offered for the children which are called camps
This year, I was asked to teach a Play Camp with 14-18 three to five-year-old children. I wasn’t
completely sure that I wanted to do this, but since I had been asked, I decided
I should do it.
Another piece to this is that older CC students are the
volunteer helpers in the children’s camps. The advantage to this is that the
older students (Challenge level) are able to practice their leadership skills
as well as interact with the younger CC students. It’s inspiring to watch these
young people develop and use their gifts to help the younger kids coming up.
It ended up being a wonderful 3 days even though day one was
a bit challenging! Things settled down on the morning of day 2 and I actually
looked forward to day 3. In the end, I am happy that I agreed to teach the Play
camp and was able to serve and bless our Classical Conversations communities in
this way.
Here is a pictorial run down of what we did this week along
with links to the projects in case you’re interested.
Coloring and Crafts:
To supplement the teaching of OILS, I found these line and
shape pages from Crayola.
Lunar Eclipse:
Thanks to Pinterest, I found this fun and simple craft to
teach the concept of a lunar eclipse to little ones.
Parts of Plants:
Pinterest again helped out with the crafts for learning about
the parts of plants.
Parts of a Plant teaching poster
Hand print plants
Parts of a Plant cut and paste:
Plants in a Pot:
This next project was one that I came up with on my own. It turned out really well, so I will post a separate tutorial for it.
Books and movies:
I chose to show the video of The Lorax by Dr. Suess as it related well to plants. We also watched a Charlie Brown movie and Veggie Tales. During the hot afternoons, this was a welcome break as we were under a heat advisory warning, so our normal outside play time was brought indoors.
Artist:
The teachers are able to choose any artist they like to teach about during Play Camp. I chose Henri
Matisse because he is an artist who enjoyed cut paper collages. This is fun and easy to do with preschoolers
as well. They just loved using the
scissors and glue. Of course, we made a gigantic mess, but the creativity was
flowing!!!
The three days of Practicum can be long and intense, but I hope the children and parents this year saw the benefits of and enjoyed being a part of Play Camp and Classical Conversations.
