Lifetime Learning
Our Larchwood Nature OT camp series has just been completed. With a weeklong administrative break in between this camp series and our Handwriting in Nature minicamp, I took some time to reflect on the past 3 weeks of camp. With this being Larchwood’s very first year running, I think it is especially important to check in with ourselves and our thoughts on how it all went and what we’ve all learned.
Looking back on the very first week I think we were all full of nervous anticipation on that Monday morning. “Would every child come?”, “How would it go?”, “Did we plan enough?”, “Are we (the students) ready?”, were all questions running through my head as we waited for cars to come up the driveway. Our lovely volunteer showed up first. Then the kids started rolling in.
That first week was a whirlwind of learning experiences for everyone, from truly administering our first assessments (which we had practiced but now had to do for real) to planning and implementing activities on the fly. And the learning just kept happening for the other weeks.
We learned to be adaptable in our activity schedule and to allow for the frequent thunderstorms with altered activities to keep the kids busy and still provide an enriching experience. We learned that storytime is always a big hit with kids, captivating them while simultaneously learning about recognition of emotions, self-regulation of emotion, or sparking discussions around topics such as self-esteem or bullying. We learned to be flexible around participation (it’s okay to not want to participate at times) and grade activities for each child. We also learned that one of the most beloved activities in our entire meticulously planned schedule was free play after snack or lunch. Simply letting the kids play and explore together in the yard was an opportunity they all embraced. This is only a fraction of the things we learned from the camp (I try my best to keep it short), but what about things we learned from the kids?
Nature painting quickly turning into finger painting
Well… We learned play skills from them (I can throw a boomerang now and it’ll come back!) and the kids learned play skills from us (Michelle gave T-ball lessons). The kids taught us to enjoy simple or not-so-perfect things like finding crayfish, messy painting, or minnow catching. We learned patience from them and that resilience or “try again” is a difficult and exhausting lesson to be learned. Through many of our discussions and talks with the kids we learned that taxes are perceived to be the biggest challenge to adults and that appreciating the small things in life, such as PortaPotties, never goes out of style.
Overall. these first weeks of camp were a great success, with lots of learning and lessons. However, I think one of the most important lessons to learn in this pediatrics placement was that we can’t be in “therapist” mode all the time. We can observe, think, and plan a ton, but it is important to sometimes let go and also just play, even as adults.