Coffee in the Denver skyline mug, "Cloudy This Morning" by George Winston on the iPod. I am at my desk in the studio on this fine Saturday morning. We have three glass-blowing dates today (can't very well call them date nights when one is at 10:00 am, one is at 3:30 pm and only the third is at night) and after getting the first one set-up, I am catching up on everything I didn't get to during the first week of summer camp madness. I think I broke Todd... again. To be fair, it was a bit of a bait and switch week for him. He was told he'd be doing the camp for three hours in the afternoon and he ended up being there from at least 9-5 every day. He has a week to recover now (as do I as we do not have anyone signed up for either of my sessions this week--kilnforming in the morning and jewelry-making in the afternoon. I should be at least a little disappointed about the lack of campers, but, frankly, I can't work up the energy. As usual there is no dearth of tasks clamoring to get done and I am hoping to get up a new website, do a class schedule for July, make the forms for a smoother date night, write about Groupons, and send a newsletter this week.
The first session of summer camp was a rousing success. All the campers had a good time (we wore them out too!) and they made some beautiful pieces. I learned some unexpected lessons with this session. As a parent I suppose I should have known, but I didn't take into account that 7-9 year-olds need free time during the day to read, sketch, or just turn their brains off. Going from one project to the next all day for five days is just too much for them (not to mention for me). I am also bad in that I tend to give too many choices for everything. Instead of offering a limited color palette, I let them choose from every color Bullseye makes. Instead of saying we're going to use frit for this project, I let them use frit, confetti, stringer, and cut pieces of glass.
However one thing that worked out way better than I thought it would was expanding the difficulty of their projects. They were way more interested in and excited by learning to cut glass than I thought they would be. They made a ton (really, a metric ton!) of kiln beads during the jewelry afternoon.
For the next Glass Craft session (the week of 6/28) I am going to both limit their choices and expand their technical range. Two of my campers are returning for the next session so I also need to make sure that they are doing enough different that they won't be bored.
Today I need to switch gears and get going on orders for my work. I took three new orders last week and I still have to get them entered into the POS system and the firing schedule. Okay, to work! To work!
Coffee in the Denver skyline mug, "Cloudy This Morning" by George Winston on the iPod. I am at my desk in the studio on this fine Saturday morning. We have three glass-blowing dates today (can't very well call them date nights when one is at 10:00 am, one is at 3:30 pm and only the third is at night) and after getting the first one set-up, I am catching up on everything I didn't get to during the first week of summer camp madness. I think I broke Todd... again. To be fair, it was a bit of a bait and switch week for him. He was told he'd be doing the camp for three hours in the afternoon and he ended up being there from at least 9-5 every day. He has a week to recover now (as do I as we do not have anyone signed up for either of my sessions this week--kilnforming in the morning and jewelry-making in the afternoon. I should be at least a little disappointed about the lack of campers, but, frankly, I can't work up the energy. As usual there is no dearth of tasks clamoring to get done and I am hoping to get up a new website, do a class schedule for July, make the forms for a smoother date night, write about Groupons, and send a newsletter this week.
The first session of summer camp was a rousing success. All the campers had a good time (we wore them out too!) and they made some beautiful pieces. I learned some unexpected lessons with this session. As a parent I suppose I should have known, but I didn't take into account that 7-9 year-olds need free time during the day to read, sketch, or just turn their brains off. Going from one project to the next all day for five days is just too much for them (not to mention for me). I am also bad in that I tend to give too many choices for everything. Instead of offering a limited color palette, I let them choose from every color Bullseye makes. Instead of saying we're going to use frit for this project, I let them use frit, confetti, stringer, and cut pieces of glass.
However one thing that worked out way better than I thought it would was expanding the difficulty of their projects. They were way more interested in and excited by learning to cut glass than I thought they would be. They made a ton (really, a metric ton!) of kiln beads during the jewelry afternoon.
For the next Glass Craft session (the week of 6/28) I am going to both limit their choices and expand their technical range. Two of my campers are returning for the next session so I also need to make sure that they are doing enough different that they won't be bored.
Today I need to switch gears and get going on orders for my work. I took three new orders last week and I still have to get them entered into the POS system and the firing schedule. Okay, to work! To work!
3 comments:
you are very bad doing bait and switch on todd! bad girl! bad! ;P
I recall being a summer camp counselor in college, when I was much more energetic. I can't imagine trying to do it, now.
bill, i can't either! i am staying far far away from brenda's next week again! of course having orders to fill helps with that ;)
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