Today was our first day of "Limudim" or educational programming. It is also the first "real" day of camp for our chanichim, our campers. We try not to beat them over the head with the idea of "learning" but rather make it all fun. Our theme is "heroes" and today we talked about the qualities that make a hero. Then we asked the kids to do various "challenge activities" that would require them to use some of the qualities of a hero. We started with the human knot, which I think is so much fun. In case you don't know what this is, you stand in a circle and have to grab the hands of someone across from you (not the same person for both hands) and then the whole group is "knotted up"....and then you have to, without letting go of hands, unknot the group back into a circle. It can be very tricky but also a lot of fun, and requires a lot of teamwork!
After this, we asked them to get themselves into birthday order without talking...and then human pyramids. All of this was a lot of fun and made for a lot of group bonding and lots of laughter! But through it all, I was so impressed that the kids really got the message that we were trying to teach them -- that heroic qualities are inherent in us all. We may not all be heroes, but we all have in us the capacity to do so.
I love seeing how, even after only one night, the campers seem like they've been here forever. There's no question that they're all having fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment