kid's day camp antics.....

Sorry no pictures of this morning's activity, no time to take them plus I won't put pictures of others up on my blog for privacy reasons.

So, this morning three of us from guild went out to demo at a Jackson Soil & Water Conservation Day Camp for kids at a huge ranch outside of Gold Hill. The purpose of the camp is to connect the kids with the land. They have 4 stations morning and afternoon - that's 8 learning opportunities ranging from drying strawberries, learning forest management practices, getting talks about animals, making butter and more. Then on Friday they get a tour of a working grain mill and picnic and swimming at a lake east of Ashland. All this for $50 for the entire week. What a bargain - I want to go next year.

We were to talk about spinning from the hoof to clothing. We had 4 groups of 5th-7th graders for 40 minutes each. I quickly realized 60 seconds into the first group that my talk about the history of spinning from the drop spindle to the electric wheel wasn't going to work - very short attention spans - so I cut back my presentation to only the mechanics of how the spindle, treadle wheel and my electric wheel work along with a touchy feely segment on different kinds of fiber. I gave them all a length of brown roving to twist and make their own yarn so they'd understand the process.

My favorite group was the third one - goofy boys probably around 11 years old. One was the instigator taking the roving and making a mustache he hung over his upper lip from his ears - this got the others going. Then there was the uni-brow, the beard, hair coming out of the nose, the ears, on the chest, underarms and then finally the belly button.....I'm sure it would have gone on to other body parts if camp counselors weren't around. This was happening as our third spinner was talking - the boys were all looking at me and I was making smiley faces at them which just egged them on. At the end I told them in 50 years they would be trimming those hairs coming out of their noses & ears. I gave them extra roving as they left as they decided to incorporate it into their skit on Friday - it was a secret, they wouldn't tell me what it was about - I would love to know. This is the group of boys I would have been hanging with if I were at camp.