For the past 3 weeks I have been working at Experience Durham in Durham University. Experience Durham organizes holiday camps for kids ages 4 to 11. The holiday camp primarily consists of sporting activities such as football (soccer), tennis, dodgeball, basketball, netball and cricket. For the first 2 weeks, our primary goal was to organize certain events for the holiday camp. As a group, we organized Fun Fridays where we picked a theme and surrounded all the sporting activities around that theme. The first Fun Friday that we organized was Disney Pixar themed. Some of the activities that we planned for the kids were capture the lamp based on Aladdin (this is capture the flag), a snowball fight based on Frozen (this is dodgeball), a scavenger hunt called Finding Nemo and creating Forky from the new Toy Story movie as their craft. Planning a day at camp seemed easy in theory since we just had to come up with ideas, however, executing the ideas became a bit tricky. We had to gather and count all the materials that were needed for the camp, we had to plan where the events would be held, and we had to create scripts that the coaches would read to the kids in order to make their experience seem more real. Hopefully it all goes well.
The kids arrived at the start of the third week. I was extremely excited to meet them; especially the four year olds. I love working with the kids because they are adorable and some are really funny. However, I did not realize how tiring it would be. Every time I come back from work, I need a nap in order to continue functioning. The younger kids (from 4 to 6) are very needy. They always need to go to the bathroom, need a drink of water, or are sad about a random thing. As a counselor, I am supposed to be there for them and help them with anything they need which is why I am always tired. Even if the job tires me though, I continue to enjoy working here. I have a choice to go with the older kids or do office work, but I still decide to be with the younger ones because I”ve gotten to know a lot of them through these few days and I enjoy being with them. Even if I get tired and I need a lot of coffee, I am glad I got placed at Experience Durham.