BootsnAll Travel Network



Summer Camp

By Allison

Our kids have finished two weeks of summer camp and have two weeks ahead of them. Through friends of a friend we got an excellent recommendation for a summer camp in Cuernavaca. The kids are there from 8:30-2:00 Monday – Friday and are having a great time. When we arrived in Cuernavaca we attended an orientation for the camp and recognized immediately that the people organizing the camp put a lot of thought into their program and were very welcoming. Our main goal for summer camp is to have William immersed in Spanish as much as possible. We recently moved to Wallingford and our neighborhood public school is an immersion school (Japanese and Spanish). Julian already goes there (on the Japanese track), but if William passes an informal competency test in Spanish he can go there, too. He learned some Spanish when we were travelling in Mexico and Central America in 2006/2007. This last year he has had Spanish lessons up the wazoo to prepare him, and our plan was to have him in summer camp in Mexico this summer to prepare him for his test. Almost all the teachers here speak English, which has been good for Julian and Theo. I’m afraid William isn’t speaking as much Spanish as we were hoping, but all three of our boys have been having fun and that is most important.

Each week they have a different theme and on Fridays the parents are invited for the final 2 hours to participate. The theme of the first week was “Games.” Matthias and I were both able to attend. We tag teamed the kids and rotated through the different stations they spend time at each day: games, music, theater, sports….. This week the theme was “the 5 senses.” All the parents assembled for a great presentation, but we were blindfolded. The kids passed around objects to feel, they walked through with incense for us to smell, played music for us to hear, and finally a few pieces of fruit from the garden to eat. Once we removed our blindfolds I realized one of the foods was pomegranate seeds, but I still don’t know what the other one was. To me it tasted like pears, but I know there are no pear trees at summer camp. My Spanish is not all that good. I understand a lot, but am a ways away from understanding everything. My worst fear through this presentation was that everyone had removed their blindfolds some time ago and there was one gringo in the room (me) who was sitting there for 30 minutes with a blindfold on. Luckily I think I caught the moment and took my blindfold off at the right time. The only mishap was that I realized each person got their own little sampler of pomegranate seeds for themselves. Like the other objects I just took one tiny seed and passed the rest to the person sitting on my right. She was still munching on hers (or rather mine) when I took off my blindfold.
Next week their theme is “the 4 elements” and for their final week here “the head.” We’ll see what is in store for them. The grounds are very nice, they spend pretty much all day outdoors and have mango, pomegranate and banana trees to enjoy and, of course, climb. For now, here are a few pictures.

William & Julian swinging at La Semilla

 

Sensory exploration

 

Parents testing their senses

La Semilla

 

William walking amongst the trees

 

All the kids at camp

 




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