Summer Camp

The kids arrived armed with their overnight gear plus an impressive amount of sunscreen, mosquito repellent and sun hats. They promptly got dirty, bug bitten, sweaty and sunburned. So we think that means that camp was pretty successful.

Overnight camp at Guandu is a three day affair. We (the instructors) decided to begin each day with a Friendship Circle and where we acted out skits, sang songs and taught vocabulary.

From there we broke out into our five teams, Stream, Forest, Estuary, Pond and Marsh, for a fun filled day of activities and games. With over eight hours of teaching time on our first day we all taught the Nature’s ABCs and had plenty of time left over for team building, games, ecosystem explorations and solo experiences… and always more games!

We found that our kids had a wide range of knowledge about the English language. Some were reticent to speak in English for the entire three days, while others were completely fluent. We gave kids the option to write and share in English or Chinese and our chaperones were often a huge help when it came to instructions. But in a culture where cram schools (after school study programs) are the norm, kids are ready for the challenge. Notably, Ali had a couple of students who were so eager to learn new words, they were memorizing latin names of birds and spelling them back to her.

Skit night was outrageous! Erin and Ali started the evening off with the Banana Bandana Skit and had kids howling with laughter. There were hilarious renditions of Penguin Company, the Banana Song and the Soup Skit which featured Zach playing an old lady and Mike playing a paramedic… musical style.

Camp came to a close with family sharing time, for which kids chose to present their drawings, perspective stories, and soundmaps, not to mention bird nests they made and a clamshell version of the Decomposer Song. Seeing many of our kids who were so shy at the beginning of they week stand up and bravely share in English was a wonderful way to close.

At the moment, we are teaching family camps and gearing up for our last week of summer camp… and our last week in Taiwan. With so many intense experiences and hilarious moments under our belts, this is going to be a hard place to leave.