Quick Tips to Get Ready for School Age Summer Camp Program

So this is going to be a real short snippet. 10 minutes or less. I just want to just talk to you a little bit about your part as a teacher to help the program run smooth for summer camp. So the first week of summer camp is really kind of the getting to know you phase. So number one is introduction. You only get one time to make a first impression. So the first week is really important that you face to face, meet every child in your group's parents. Absolutely important you go up to them, introduce yourself. You know, you could do it on life cubby too, but I do prefer that you do it in person. You can do it in conjunction. Obviously, we want to keep safe social distancing. So I'm not, you know, saying to go up and shake anybody's hand, but I do think it's extremely important that you meet every child in your group's parents. Parent, parents. So same thing with the children. You have one week to really get to know them and they have one week to really get to kind of know you. So sometimes that can get off to a little rocky start and I don't want that to carry on throughout the whole summer camp. So be really, really conscious about just trying to figure out and understand where each child's coming from. Part of our enrollment packets there is a getting to know you paper. I think it's very important that you look through all of them. You can certainly make your own as well. I don't have any, you know, any downside for you to do that. If you want to ask your own specific questions, go right ahead and do that. But week number one is introductions. Also, some of you are only here for the summer, so make sure you, you know, get to know some of your co workers. We're pretty friendly bunch. Some of us have been around a real long time. Some of you had us as teachers and now you're teachers too. So that's super weird. And I'm really old, but that's cool. Number two, understanding the rules. It's so important for you to understand.

How and when to state the rules and are they age appropriate. So if you're constantly saying, stop running in the building, stop running in the building, stop running in the building. You are not communicating correctly. So I think before we go in the building, let's say we're out in the playground and we have the children line up. It's very easy to do this. Hey, remember when we walk into the building, we have to use walking feet or we're walking in the building. I just Want to remind you for everyone's safety that we're walking in the building, then you're not saying 100 times, stop running, don't run to your locker. If you do it right at the beginning, you set the expectation. It's super easy. It's not really magic. Understand what rules are super important, super strict. Like you can't jump in the pool. That's a no brainer, right? As to. Sometimes we might need to bend something to, to help accommodate a child or the situation. Maybe it's pouring out today and we're not going to be able to use the pool. So we're going to have to do something else with the children that.

Meets the guidelines of, you know, physical activity and for them to, to be able to have a fun summer. But it's really important that you understand the rules, what the DCAF rules are or DHS rules are and how you implement them in your setting. I know we had talked about like drinks, like you can't have coffee on the floor or soda on the floor. We're only allowed to have water. That's not my rule, that's the state's rule. So understand the rules and make sure that you, especially with working with the children, make sure that you are able to state them in a positive way, in a way that makes sense, in a way that's clear for everyone. Rotations. Oh my God. These are probably the things that drive us the most crazy during summer camp. So rotations are when we take our group from one area and we move them to another area. So some people are really great at moving right on time and then other people are not so great at moving right on time and it kind of clogs everything up and you end up with a traffic jam because we have to be so aware of social distancing. Right now we have multiple doors to get in and out. So I'm going to give you an example. Let's say you're going into the kitchen area, but the children in the kitchen area are not out yet. Having your children lined up to go into a room where you have children coming out doesn't make sense. We have another door. You can just go out the main door to the playground and go into the kitchen through the door from the playground and then that way nobody's walking by. The group from the kitchen can leave the kitchen easily and the group that's got to go into the kitchen can go in through the door that is from the playground area. Instead of everybody trying to congest through that hallway same Thing when children are changing for the pool, we're going to have to do that in much smaller groups than we usually have.

So we may have to do rotations where 15 minutes of your last rotation you're using to do pool changes. So if it's a 9 to 10 o', clock, you might do from 9 to 9:45 on the activity. And at 9:45, you're bringing small groups into the restrooms to supervise while they're getting changed. So be aware of that. Be aware of other doors, other other groups so that we can keep the social distancing and just be aware of your time as well. Personalities, yours and theirs. Sometimes personalities get along great and sometimes they don't. It's our job to figure out the best way to work with different personalities. And that's a skill that you will use your whole life, especially for my friends that are going to school in the public schools to work with other teachers. You're going to work with probably, you know, seven or eight administrators and another 50 to 60, maybe even 70 teachers. You have special ed teachers, the reading teacher, the gym teacher, the art teacher. So this is a skill that I think you're gonna use no matter what kind of job you have. So be aware of personalities. Be aware of yours. Be aware of your triggers. Those are things that will help you have a smooth summer. Take initiative and ask how you can help. The worst thing ever is when you see something that's broken or something's not working right and you say, oh, I, you know, that's, oh, I didn't realize that was broke. And someone says to you, oh yeah, it's been broken for two weeks. Like, take some initiative. If you see something that needs to be corrected, needs to be fixed, please let us know. You can tell us verbally write it down. Using written is better and easier. Or if it's something you could fix yourself, please do you know. And it could, I'm using that as an example. It could be anything. You see, the water cooler is out of water. Please. The director doesn't need to do that. You, if you have time and you're able and you're in an area to do that, please do it. We all got to work together and that will make our summer much easier. If you're not sure about something, we want you to ask questions. And then not only ask questions. If you think that you have a way to do something better, then we ask for you to give suggestions. You do not have to wait to have a formal survey to give us suggestions. Again, you can just write them down. You can message us, you can send it to our email. There's any, any way that works for you is fine with us. Sometimes at night after work, a little email works well. Family tree officeahoo.com that you could get me, Ms. Chris, Jaleesa, any of the admin team, we all have access to that email. Communication goes two ways. So a lot of times people say lack of communication, lack of communication, you're part of that problem. Because communication goes two ways. If you are not clear about something, you got to ask the question. I don't know. You don't know it if you don't ask. And the same thing with parents. We need your help to tell the parents what's going on, what the field trip is that's coming up if their child needs anything for an activity. Like.

Sometimes we'll do like tie dye, T shirts, things like that. I do feel like we'll probably have a lot more in house stuff this week. This week, I'm sorry, this summer than.

We normally do. But we're going to need your help with the communication. And then lastly is curriculum and lesson planning, which we will have a whole segment on that. We'll come back to that. It's going to be our last segment for summer camp training, but our curriculum and lesson planning. Know what the curriculum is. Go over your lesson plans ahead of time. Know what supplies you need.

Know your part. So if you and your partner are working together and they're really good at sports and art and you're really good at cooking and team building, then let one lead, you know the activities that they're good at and let the other one lead the activities that they're good at. So 0 seconds. 30 seconds. Okay, 30 seconds. I gotta wrap it up. So Jen, make it quick. Introduce yourself. Understand the rules, rotations, personalities. Take initiative. Ask questions, give suggestions. Communication. Super important. Curriculum and lesson planning. Know what's going on. Bye.