I’m half way through the busiest two weeks of my year. This is when I am directing and teaching a summer camp. It is only for two weeks, but it is intense.

Last week’s camp theme was essentially Science & Art and the huge fun messes you can make in both. I had 14 kids in the group, ages 5 to 8. We explored flubber (a gooey mixture of Borax and Elmer’s Glue), baking soda and vinegar explosions, splatter painting, diet soda + mentos candy explosions, and more. It was fun. We also spent a good amount of time playing with the hose in the school yard. Reports back from parents indicated that the kids had a blast.

I was thinking about this whole experience, the intensity of it, the corresponding emotions that go with it. Last year was my first time ever doing a job of this level of intensity and responsibility with kids. Wait, no, that’s not true. I used to work in a daycare center where I was the Lead Teacher. I did that for about 10 months during graduate school. But the fact is, those were essentially BABIES, I mean, large toddlers are still babies really. My classroom back then was filled with little children, all between 18 months and two years old. The needs for activities for essentially pre-verbal children are quite different from working with a largely literate group of school aged children.

I put a tremendous amount of research and effort into last year’s camp. I was insanely anxious– filled with worry that kids wouldn’t like the camp, that I’d lose my patience, that there would be insanity and chaos, and that kids would be unhappy, bored, whiny, and above all complain to their parents and other teachers about my obvious lack of competence. And, in addition, my anxiety said in a whispered frantic tone to my pounding heart, more than likely I’d be fired when the kids under my care ended up being rushed to the ER due to my frank incompetence at even keeping them safe, let alone happy.

Wow. I think I suffered a similar bout of anxiety prior to this year’s camp, although I’d like to think that it was somewhat less intense. It’s important to note that last year’s camp was quite successful. None of the bad things I worried about actually happened. Kids came back to school in the fall and actually told me that the two weeks they spent with me were the best day camp weeks of their entire summer. Sure, they loved the swimming and field trips, and special programming featured at other camps, but it was the FUN and the comfort and the sheer joyfulness of camp with me that came back to them when they thought about what was good about camp.

So you’d think that I have nothing to worry about. Why so much anxiety? I don’t know, to be perfectly honest. I am now halfway through my camp experience for the year. The first week went very well. I love the group of kids I have– and I have a homogenous age group unlike last year’s wide age range. It is nice to be able to talk to them about what we’re going to do, they listen well (mostly!) and they seem to be cooperative (mostly!).

Next week our theme will be world travel. I haven’t picked all our activities yet, so this weekend I have to do a little shopping, and some planning. I love the idea of doing multicultural crafts, cooking, and activities. I got the idea to have each child make a passport for themselves, and then we’ll stamp them each time we “visit” another country.

I think it’s going to be a good week, fun and exhausting in many ways. Then… onto the summer. Hoorah!