Summer Clinics

[MHSmirage]

As I'm sure all of us do, I've got summer clinics with my high school groups all summer long. What do you do to make it fun? After all it's the kid's summer break too.

I'm thinking of spirit days. It's something we did in corps during everydays and I do it for band camp. (i.e. crazy sock day, camo day, and my personal fave "old uniform" day!)

any other ideas?

[quegrawks]

We only meet once a week for 3 hours at a time as an "optional, but highly encouraged" situation. usually it works well and there's not much time to worry about spirits getting low because they want to learn as much as possible so they can "do cool guard work" during band camp to impress their band friends and each other.

[eaca71997]

Yay! Fun topic!

I like to encourage the kids to plan socials after practice if it's a short practice and I don't want to take too much time away from instruction (like meeting at the local ice cream shop afterwards).

One thing I've done in the past for a "quick" get-to-know-each-other is take attendance each day for the first week or so (out loud like they do in the classroom) and make each day a different question so instead of saying "here" or just scanning the room to make sure everyone is present I would say, "What is your favorite song?" and then actually call attendance, giving the kids a chance to express their favorite and then other kids to get to know them.

I've had guest instructors who have come in and asked a series of questions where all the kids had to do is raise their hands to answer but it helps us all get to know each other, "Who has traveled to at least 5 different states?" "Who has traveled to another country?" "Who can speak a language other than English?" "Who has been to a concert this year?" etc... It's quick.

Then there are a wide variety of icebreakers and get-to-know-you games you can search for online if you search for icebreakers or camp songs. We do these during the long days of camp when you sometimes need a 10 - 15 minute break from spinning.

During our away camp we also plan socials for the evenings - karaoke night, campfire skits, a theme dance, etc.

And sometimes the student leaders will do nice little surprises like hang posters on the new kids' cubbies or put a nice "you're doing great!" note in their flag bag...something like that.

And the spirit days are totally fun too! We usually do that at least 2 of the 5 days of our basics camp.

I'd love to hear more ideas!

Catina

[colorguardguy]

I usually always have games to play, I have a binder full of ice breakers and team building games. I usually take 20 - 30 mins out of each summer rehearsal to do at least one of these. The kids love them! I also love them.

We usually have the "spirit days" for our guard camp. We do camo, old uniform, pajama, school spirit, crazy day (which is the wackiest outfit they can come up with)

http://i297.photobucket.com/albums/mm202/l...rd/S3010001.jpg

Edited June 1, 2008 by colorguardguy