In article
, Luna
wrote:
In article ,
ospam (Splanche) wrote:

As for it being a brief game, well, that's possible, but I know when I
played a version of this at a 3rd grade birthday party it was a lot of fun.
Since 3rd grade is kind of the midpoint in the age range of the kids I'll
be working with, I figured aiming for that age would snare the most kids.

I think you're being a little too optimistic about reading skills.
Most 3rd graders would be ok, but it sounds like you have entering
Kindergarten
and up-- which means a number of kids will have VERY limited reading skills,
and then the older kids (5th, 6th grade) will have no interest. My 4th
grader
can't stand the "getting to know people" game like this.


I'm sure we'll have many kids who won't like to play this game, just as
we'll have many that won't want to play the other games either. Some of
the kids don't want to be at camp at all, they want to be at home, watching
tv or playing video games, and they're ticked off that their parents made
them go to camp. However, not participating is not an option, in any of
the activities we do. This goes for us, the counselors, as well. If one
of the counselors starts a sing-along, the rest of us have sing too,
whether we want to or not.

I'm sure glad I'm not sending my 8-year-old son to your summer camp! Being
forced to play a lame game like that one would result in even more
stubborn fits than school does. He might CHOOSE to play such a game,
but being given no options is almost certain to result in massive
disobedience. Getting him to go back the second day would probably be
nearly impossible.

We ARE sending him to one day-camp this summer: the Pisces Moon
Theater is having kids put on a production of Wizard of Oz, which he
(and one of his best friends) will be going to for a week. This was
his choice---he turned down the option of working on a production of
Harry Potter instead or in addition. He likes acting and stagecraft
(at least thinking about set design and props---he hasn't had much
experience with them yet).

Since we're in Seattle until the end of June, our choices for summer
activities for him in Santa Cruz is a bit restricted---many of the
things we had considered started in June, or conflicted with the
Wizard of Oz week in July. The Seattle summer activities start a bit
later, so we don't have many options for them either. He'll probably
end up spending the summer with his nose in a book. (He regards most
activities other than drawing or computer games as simply
interruptions to his reading time.)

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
Affiliations for identification only.