I did my internship at Miss Y's Art Camp. This was a camp for kids aged 6-10 where they could learn to express themselves creatively through guided activities such as painting, drawing, and playing with other children. My job was to help coordinate activities and make sure the kids were safe and happy.
Week One: mon-fri 6 hours a day=30 hours This was a really good experience for me. I am interning at an art camp where there is a new set of kids every week. Each day the kids spend time with their journals, either drawing or writing in them until all of the kids arrive. After that we do the Daily Challenge, a guided art project that the kids all do together. Once that’s done we have free time, then lunch for about an hour. Then we have quiet time. Once all of that is over we work on the “Big Project” which is a project that will take up a couple days to work on. On day one we made little shrinky dink aquariums, where the kids made fishes or any sort of aquatic thing with shrinky dinks, then we got a see through container with a lid and added gravel, a little fake plant, and some water. Then at the end they put their little shrinky dinks in it. I help the kids with art projects when they don’t understand something, and help Jo-Anne (the woman who runs the camp) put together art projects. The kids have been really good, most of them are going into fifth or sixth grade with a couple of first graders. It’s been a really great experience so far and I can’t wait to see what next week brings. I hope that with each week I’m able to give at least one kid a positive experience. I remember going to camps like this when I was younger and I still remember it in a positive light, and I hope I can do that for these kids.
Week Two: mon-fri 6 hours a day=30 hours This week has been extremely different. We’ve moved locations, so we are now at Longfellow park which is good because we no longer have to walk to a different location for the kids to eat, and there’s a play structure right outside the building. The kids this week are very different, to say the least. They are way more energetic, they make me miss the kids from week one. There is also a man who came to the park three times to use the public restrooms, and left them an absolute mess. The third time he came we were able to get a picture of him and he’s now banned from the park. On one of the colder days this week we set up a projector inside and watched Jem and the Holograms during free time which was a nice addition to the week. Something that I really like about this internship is that everything is changing, Jo-Anne will move around the days schedule to fit the kids needs and it keeps it interesting for us. This internship is exhausting but I really love doing it, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Week Three: mon-fri 6 hours a day=30 hours We had a much more uneventful week this time (thank god). We had a group of eight kids which is half the size of our normal class which made things a lot easier. This week one of the kids grandparents came by and taught everyone double-dutch which was a lot of fun for everyone. Jo-Anne and I even joined in. Jo-Anne and I are both relieved that the week is over and that we have the next week off. Today she gave me a lovely thank you card, with a very nice note and $50 in it as a thank you gift which was very sweet of her. I’ve realised today that each week leaves me feeling more exhausted, but in the best way possible, like I’ve been doing something worthwhile with my energy.
Week Four: mon-fri 6 hours a day=30 hours This last week has been exhausting, it feels like coming back from winter vacation except I am sunburnt and sore. The kids this week were energetic and engaged, with the exception of about two kids who just wanted to play outside all the time, but nevertheless we persisted.There is a new teachers assistant named Anna who will be helping out for the rest of the summer. She seems very nice and I’m excited for the extra help. On Wednesday there was a substitute teacher for Jo-Anne, she was very excited to be here and she was very engaged with the kids, but one of the students stapled his fingers while she was there and had a full freakout. He ended up making a really big deal about it for the rest of the week. But we had some new crafts for the kids this week. My personal favorite was the mini campsite, where the kids made a little 3D camping scene using watercolor paper, pipe-cleaner people, paper tents and fire, and some sand from the outdoor sandbox at the park. Even the kids who wanted to play outside all week were engaged in that one. Overall this was a really great week, and I hope that some of the kids from this week come back next week.
Week Five: mon-fri 6 hours a day=30 hours Everyone is tired. We have 16 kids this week and I am so drained. What we’ve ended up doing is splitting the kids up into two teams made up of eight kids each. I lead one team and the new teachers assistant, Anna, leads the other one. One team will play outside while the other stays inside to do the organised art project, then they switch. It’s worked pretty well so far *knock on wood*. We’ve been doing lots of new projects this week because we feel bad for the kids who have been here for three weeks now and have been doing the same projects over and over again. On Tuesday we used bleeding tissue paper to create a watercolor effect and once it dried we had them draw in black marker over it. The results were really cool. And on Wednesday we did a smaller project where we all painted these big wooden beads and turned them into keychains. That’s probably my favorite project so far. This is my last week interning at Miss Y’s Art Camp. I’m sad to go, but I’m also relieved that it’s over. Miss Y is an amazing boss and working with her has been so much fun, I couldn’t have found a better summer internship no matter how hard I tried.
Closing Report: This summer I interned at Miss Y’s Art Camp. A week long program that kids come to from 8:30am - 3:30pm. While the kids are there they get to play outside and participate in group art projects. I got to work as a teacher’s assistant for Miss Y at this camp and it was a really great time. Everyday I got to work with kids as a group and individually, I’d prep for different art projects, and I’d watch and play with the kids while they were outside. I love working with kids, I’d like to work as a Kindergarten teacher when I grow up, but every day my patience was tried. I had to learn how to convince kids to do basic things that they shouldn’t need to be told like not to paint their face, or to wash their hands, or (my personal favorite) not to take selfies in the tree (the kid who I had to tell to stop doing that ended up falling out of the tree and getting a sprained ankle because he didn’t listen). I used communication skills I didn’t even know I had. Something I hadn’t realised was how limited a seven year olds vocabulary is, and how hard it can be to explain certain words to kids without using the word they don’t understand, because of this I had to approach explaining things differently. Nearly every week there would be at least one kid who was just too much for us to handle. Whether the kid won’t sit still, or won’t listen to instructions, or will act aggressively towards other kids, there’s always at least one. On the second week of camp we had three of these kids, and it was terrible, everyone was miserable and upset. These kids were stubborn, they’d get a scrape and scream their lungs out, insist that they needed a band aid, and wouldn’t let you get anywhere near them to put the band aid on. These kids were infuriating, but seeing the look on their face when they made something that they were really proud of, reminded me why I loved being there. I learned about what kids are really like, over the course of five weeks I’d like to think that we had almost every kind of kid, and while it was exhausting, it was really informative. I went into this thinking I was gonna be great, I would never run out of energy, I would feel replenished and excited every day, I would remember all of the kids names and bond with all of them. My actual experience was a little different. I ran out of energy fast, I woke up excited but I was also exhausted, and no matter how hard I tried there were always kids whose names I would forget and wouldn’t get to talk to them. I expected myself to do so much for these kids over the course of five days. I did get to make strong connections with some of the kids, but five days isn’t enough time to form a strong emotional connection with 14 kids, I’d be lucky if I got to bond with three or four. But I always went out of my way to make sure that all of the kids were having a good time so that they’d remember art camp and be happy about what they experienced, and I’d be happy to know that maybe ten years from now one of the kids who I was ready to bop on the head thought back on art camp and remembered how much fun it was.