Coleman's Camp Fall 2013 Montage

Coleman's Camp - Weekly Journal Entry: 4/8/2013

Week of 4-8: With the library room unavailable at Corinth, the Thursday group met in my classroom this week.  We started by learning about my new classroom pet, Lightning Bolt, a baby bearded dragon.  Kids learned how to properly hold a bearded dragon and passed him around the group.  We then created a voice-overdub project where we selected a Disney video with a number of characters.  We watched the video several times, the volume muted, and created a new narrative to match the images.  Kids selected characters, worked up voices, and practiced improvisational skills while the video segment played.  The challenge was to create a (somewhat) coherent narrative with a beginning, middle, and end that we filmed.  The Saturday group was back at the Corinth Library for a LEGO themed challenge.  Some of the session time was spent in cooperative play, imagining and building various LEGO creations.  The second part of the session involved a challenge where kids were put into two member teams.  Team members were then separated from each other while one member created a LEGO build with 5 or 6 pieces.  The team members would then rejoin and would have to guide their partners through selecting pieces, assembling, and trying to duplicate the original piece as closely as possible.

Coleman's Camp - Weekly Journal Entry: 1/7/2013 and 1/14/2013

Week of 1-7 and 1-14: the Thursday group has two weeks full of preparing costumes, making props, writing scripts, practicing parts, and drawing on their bodies with (hopefully) washable markers!  The Saturday group worked to create Monsters and their habitats/haunts. The Saturday kids created back stories for their Monsters and planned presentations of how the Monsters lived and the adventures they went on.  Filming the plays and presentations has been exciting and hilarious.  Videos uploaded to Coleman’s Camp YouTube playlist, including some great outtakes and behind-the-scenes material.  The kids have been amazing and their creativity boundless.  The skits and presentations involved group communication and cooperation, creative writing, art skills for props and Monster creation, and planning out beginning, middle, and end of a story or presentation as well as improvising through mistakes.  I am extremely proud of everyone!  The Saturday group also participated in a LEGO based problem solving day where they were challenged to recreate something from their homes, build something without looking at it, and working as a group (including Mr. Coleman) to build cooperatively.

Coleman's Camp - Weekly Journal Entry: 1/1/2013

Week of 1-1: The start of a new year!  My Thursday group has been thinking of doing small skits or plays for several weeks to demonstrate and explore some of the concepts we have been working on.  However, we have consistently run out of time each week and this week they demanded they have the time and materials to create original performances.  We brainstormed a variety of surreal, humorous, and interesting ideas that the kids were passionate about.  Groups were formed based on interest in each of the stories.  We worked through outlining a story with a beginning, middle and end and then students began scripting out the actual story, parts, and building props.  The Saturday group I wanted to reverse the story writing process and give them a concrete object to build their stories around so we created monsters from scratch, using some high-quality fabric samples, wooden blocks, glue guns, and an assortment of eyes, metal pieces, and art supplies.  Next week both groups will be adding to their stories and will be performing their skits/plays - my plan is to record and post the videos.