week one: pirate's of the salt lake valley

well, the first week of camp is over. what a relief! we can finally get into the full swing of things. I'm actually quite excited for the summer ahead. we have an absolutely fabulous staff and a lot of fun stuff planned.

monday: the whole camp went to liberty park, which is always a good time. I did a place-based lesson of the salt lake valley in the seven canyons fountain. it covered such awesome things as local geography, a little history, but it was mostly about watersheds. (too bad the actual fountain was closed for maintenance... no dipping in any "streams" to cool off.)

tuesday: I took a group back to liberty park for my elective. this time it was fred the fish. man how i love fred the fish. it's a great lesson on storm water pollution. some things I learned this go around: the kids are more engaged if they can actually hear and understand what is going on, but dumping yucky things in a jar is always fun. that afternoon I just ran some random sports (boccie ball, frisbee golf, and field hockey/soccer) games for the younger groups, while they weren't making boats to float in the marriott library fountain.

wednesday: it totally rained! all our plans had to be changed since we do everything outside. I took my elective group to the marriott library to read nature stories. that afternoon the whole camp went swimming at steiner (except for the youngest groups because there isn't a zero entry to the pool... they went down to the slc main library instead.) and swam in their indoor pool. we had looked at the wrong shuttle times (the summer schedule runs off the normal afternoon schedule, who knew!) so everyone was a little cold on the way back to campus. overall it was a fun time, though.

thursday: my elective group went swimming at the HPER pool on campus. I got to work in the office instead of swim. I was there pretty much all day. oh, and it was another rainy day. which is always fun for camp.

friday: we went up to rockport reservior, but didn't swim because it was too cold. we also went over to jordanelle state park to check out the nature center. jordanelle was really fun. I pretty much hung out with the littlest group--the five year olds--and had the best time ever. their counselor, lisa, turned everything into a teachable moment. these kids were so engaged! we even got to see an osprey nest! the only bad part about this day was that we were fifteen minutes late getting back to campus. some parents weren't too happy. we would've been on time but three kids refused to hike any faster than they were going. as a result, the rest of the camp was waiting on a bus for twenty minutes...

so the week, even despite the inclement weather, was a total success. it was very reminiscent of the first week of camp two years ago: the rain, it being the first week, having to be in the gym instead of on president's circle, the smaller group sizes... but luckily this year there were no random rainy day gym accidents. no broken femurs, no reason for a totally ridiculous law-suit.

the only real accident we had this week involved a counselor. but he fractured his knee-cap in four different places and won't be able to walk for weeks... yikes! that is pretty major, but at least it didn't involve one of the campers!

fave quote of the week:
"club U rocks harder than bon jovi!"
said by an eight year-old camper