Itty Bitty Arts Camp | Onceuponatime & Ever After | Day 1
Itty Bitty Quote of the Day: “Why is there so much having fun here?!?”
We have reached our last week of Glitter & Razz camp for the summer. It’s been a long and GREAT summer and we are wrapping it up with our final Itty Bitty Arts Camp. The theme…”Onceuponatime & Ever After.” This is a fun one. It’s a week where we are inspired by our favorite stories and books to create stories of our own. As the week goes on, we will talk about what stories are, how they are structured, why they important, and what we learn from them.
Today has been a day a day of introductions. In our Move & Groove (creative movement class) with the extraordinary teacher, Spring Berlandt, we played a lot of games that helped us learn each other’s names and explore different storybook characters with our bodies including Pegasus and Darth Vader.
Our Drama Classes with Cassie Powell are already beginning to create the plays they will perform at the end of the week. Each creative kid was asked to think about their favorite stories and where those stories take place. Then, they gave each other “tours” of those places on stage. This was a great way to practice leading and following at the same time teaching young actors what a set is and how they are created on stage to help the enhance the story they are acting out.
Just a brief word about Cassie. Cassie has been teaching with us since Dec 09 and she truly is a “creative genius.” 
She is very successful in giving each kid an opportunity to contribute their own creative voice while at the same time, always insisting on a high standard of collaborative skills. This is not an easy feat with this age group as they are just beginning to learn the skills associated with generosity, forgiveness, and peaceful conflict resolution. Cassie will be moving down to San Mateo in the fall to be a full-time drama teacher during the school day (lucky them). But she will be back for some of our Play in a Day Camps. (If you know anyone in San Mateo, let us know. We are working to hook up an afterschool class down there.)
In Magic Messes (our art class), Martin Brecht dove right in with having each kid create their own story books. They talked about how books contain both words and stories and each kid, even the ones who can’t yet write, were supported to add at least some words to their books. And there were, of course, lots of pictures. Cool ones. Today, they started with pencil but, knowing Martin, I am sure there is lots of color in store for tomorrow.
I definitely want to celebrate Sara, our Junior Junior Youth Intern today. Sara might win the award for most Glitter & Razz camps attended (if we had that award). She is almost 9 and was most recently in our Go Girls! Theater Camp. Her moms really needed a place for her to be this week before school starts next week and asked of if we could take her. We are so glad that we said yes. Sara has been one of the best helpers we have had. She knows exactly what her role is this week as she plays with the kids and helps the teachers hand out materials. At Kids Choice, she was even witnessed coaching a couple of Itty Bitties through a dispute. One of the kids even called her “teacher.” Very cool.
Sara and Martin in conference during Magic Messes class
In addition to our classes, we were very lucky to be able to use the playground of our good neighbor, Rockridge Little School. The school is on a break so our after lunch Kids Choice will be outside all week! Hooray!
Another favorite time of day is storytime with our Assistant Teaching Artist, Cinda. Today’s story was the very popular, “The Patch.” By the way, if parents ever want to come in and read a story to us during this time, you are very welcome. Sign-ups are at the sign in/out desk when you come in.
