March 31-April 4

So last week was Spring Break for all of Hendrick's County and Wayne Township schools. Of course that meant my son was off school, but also that meant the kids who usually go to Cummins for the after school program were out all week too. Cummins offered a spring break camp for all their adolescent after school kids M-Th from 9am- 2:30pm. The guy who runs this program, J, asked for my help during the week since they expected a lot of kids, and I was happy to get experience doing something else, and to help.
When I showed up on Monday there was no one there, and I thought I was in the wrong place. I ran home to get something (it was at McClelland school, right by my house), and when I came back J, 4 kids, and another woman were there. I found out the other woman was there to help just like I was. I wondered where the other kids were because we were expecting close to 20 kids for the week. J asked each of the kids what their goal was for the week, and what they wanted to learn while they were there. One kid wanted to learn to get along with his younger brother better since they always fought. Another wanted to learn to deal with his anger better.
After we did short introductions J told the boys (all the kids were males) they could go to the gym to blow off some energy. One of the boys seemed to not be able to sit still, he kept getting up, moving around, and playing with anything around him. J came prepared with games, activities, and different balls. We played football, basketball, kickball, and other games. The gym had a stage so one of the kids (the one who couldn't sit still) went up there and came up with creative things to play.
After we had lunch J had an activity titled "This is me". It had 3 pages of questions like "the things I do best...", "If I had one wish...", "When I grow up I want to...", "The best thing about me is...", "what makes me the angriest is...", " and "Of all the thing I have done, I am proudest of...". I learned quite a lot about each kid through their answers to these questions.
Two of the kids that attended were foster kids living in the same house. They had obviously known each other for quite a while and almost considered each other brothers. one of the boys had just been adopted and once this happened he began calling his foster parent "mom". I thought this was a great break-through for him, but unfortunately it had negative effects on the other boy who was still only a foster kid. I could see it hurt their relationship and made the foster kid jealous. He tried making fun of the adopted kid for calling her mom, but the adopted kid was very adamant in how much he looked up to his adopted mother. In all his work he always referred to her as is hero, as someone he wanted to do things for, and someone he looked up to.
After this we went back to the gym and played basketball again, team kickball, and other things mainly just to pass the time. I knew the rest of the week would be a great learning experience, and a lot of fun!