Pequeños Exploradores Creativos

Thrice a week for the past two months, a handful of my teenagers and I have led a day camp for children - the "creative little explorers" - during school vacation. Activities have included math, spelling, and grammar review; nature class; and arts & crafts, among other things ("other things" being activities in which I deemed it unsafe to bring out my camera for fear of it being knocked out the window or otherwise destroyed by the kids' overwhelming enthusiasm, as when we played Four Square and Pictionary).

Reading and spelling practice, combined with coloring.

Recycling plastic bottles to plant herbs.

One week, we did Lectura en Acción (Reading in Action), an activity credited to my friend Claire.

The idea is that you read a story to the group, then improvise props and costumes and assign roles, and then re-read the story as the kids act it out.

See if you can tell what story we did:

At one point the wolf jumped the gun and started tearing down the second little pig's house without having the decency to threaten him beforehand:



Continuing with this theater theme, we have spent the past few weeks preparing a "títeres show" - a puppet show, that is - to celebrate the end of our course. The celebration is tomorrow (YIKES), and some special guests will be present. For now, here's a sneak peek at the process of building the set:

(My brother, Gringo Sam, was visiting for part of the project.)

(He taught the kids to juggle with limes.)

(The story we will present involves a beanstalk.)

Stay tuned for more tomorrow. Please pray that the set holds up...that the sock puppets don't lose googly eyes in the middle of the show like they did today during rehearsal...and that the curtain doesn't fall down. Thanks.