Plan for the Unplanned

Today, the second day of camp, was a day I had to be very flexible and innovative on the fly!  It was about 95 degrees and almost 100% humitity.  It was miserable to say the least!  So I knew that I had to quickly adapt what I had planned to add some water games and do some things indoors where it was air conditioned.   I pulled out my large tic-tac-toe tarp, added some humans and some water and viola...a way to cool off!

I call this game, "Tic-Tac-Term!"  The kids were divided into two teams, so I drilled them on terminology terms.  If they were able to correctly identify the term and tell what it meant, they could place themselves on the tic-tac-term mat in whatever spot they wanted.  Of course, we had to keep the mat wet...continuously!  :) I tell them to wear a bathing suit everyday so we have this option.

We also spend about an hour indoors.  We worked with handbells and played through 3 different songs.  Because most of the campers are younger kids, we played using letters of the alphabet rather than looking at notes on the staff.  I typed up a couple of songs I knew they were familiar with and I'm happy to say, they did super well and loved it! 

In addition, we played a fun game of Musical Zap!  where I quizzed them on notes on the staff.  While it wasn't a planned activity, it worked!  They are better at reading notes so the goal was accomplished!

When you run a camp, you MUST be flexible and be able to "plan for the unplanned" being able to make changes quickly.