Chess Camp is moving along smoothly. They’ve each been working hard building all of their chess pieces and painting their boards. Tomorrow is Friday… which also makes it their last day to finish everything up. Our plan is to paint all of the pieces with colored underglazes and hope that none of the pieces break along the way. If they do, there’s going to be some frantic re-building!!!

It’s been a long week and it’s only Thursday!!!
My Summer Campers have been working so hard making their chess sets. Each one has a theme and they’ve been building all of their pieces out of terra cotta clay. Some of them have been struggling, while others have been cruising right through. I just hope everyone has been scoring & slipping really well. Guess we’ll find out when their pieces start to dry, huh???

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Could they BE any cuter???

Some pawns are really piling up in Chess Camp… some better than others.
Some are just funny!!!

Not so surprisingly… my Summer Camp kids “once again” came up with the brilliant idea to have a Chocolate Chip Cookie Bake-Off on Wednesday. Kind of amazing to me how they continue to come up with this idea “all on their own” year after year??? Go figure. And every wonderful idea needs a great prize, right? So I built this terra cotta “BEST COOKIE” plate for the winner!!!

I just love when my Summer Campers hit their groove and dive right in. When kids who have never met each other start collaborating & working together. When they step-up and help teach each other how to do things. Makes my teaching job so much easier… and so endearing. I have some great kids this week!

This week at Summer Camp we’re doing Chess Camp!
My campers are each designing & creating an entire chess set out of clay. Of course the first step Monday morning was an “official” brainstorming session where they all came up with some really fantastic ideas!!!

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Today was another messy day in Wheelthrowing Camp. The kids were throwing with terra cotta clay… and found it to be a LOT dirtier & sloppier than regular stoneware. Messy… but so much FUN!!!

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Okay… so today was the first day of my second week of camp.
Another great group of kids for a week of Wheelthrowing Camp.
A little bit older then the group last week, More experience throwing too!
Off to a good start… until…

So I’m doing my first throwing demo with all of the kids gathered around.
We’ve already done introductions, week plans, goals, expectations, etc.
So I’m sitting at a wheel throwing, talking & demo-ing. When I started to hear some commotion going on behind me. Not sure what it was, but I knew it was a couple of the older kids. When I turned to look over my right shoulder, I could see one of the older girls slowly leaning forward, dropping slowly, fainting all the way down to the ground. What?!!!

So I hopped up to check on her and she was already coming to and trying to get up. More embarrassed than injured. She had no color in her face so we had her sit down and drink some water. She said she was feeling better and the color started to come back to her face.

I went back to my demo… with one eye on her at the same time.
She said it was not her first time fainting. And her friends knew that she had done it before at school. Yet nothing about it on her camp medical list??? I asked if she wanted us to call her Mom, she said no. But when she started losing color again… and started vomiting into the garbage can… we knew we had to call home. Mom came and picked her up from camp.

We all hope that she’s feeling better…
and that she makes it back to camp for the rest of the week!

Not the best start for Week Two of Summer Camp. Tomorrow will be better…

TUESDAY UPDATE : She’s back at camp… as good as NEW!!!

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It’s a “shame” they’re not having any fun in Summer Camp this week!!! Ha.