Day 44

Monday's always go by soo fast. There's so much paperwork and things to tell parents when they bring their kids in the morning, then we have to set up classroom rules, we introduce ourselves, and then it's lunch before we know it. Then, it's 1:00 before I know it, and half of our 5 and 6 year olds are going home.. turns out my routine is a little different this week. There is a 5th and 6th grade camp that needs an extra helper this week, and guess who gets that job :-)

First, I'll sum up what happened while I was with the 5 and 6 year olds. It is Splash! week, so we learned about freshwater today. The animal presenter brought the leopard gecko and a giant African millipede this morning. We fed the Japanese Koi, toured through Australia, and took our group photo.

 

Two of our campers this week - Alora and Mattthew - are a few that we had way back in our first week of camp.

After checking out half of our campers at 1:00,  I met up with the 5th and 6th graders. I felt like I shrunk when I got there... I went from having kids at my waist to almost eye level. hahaha It was fun to do something a little different. After I was introduced, one of the girls said to me, "Hey, we have the same name." I replied, "Yes, finally another Jessica! I haven't met one yet this summer." 

We did a Scavenger Hunt throughout the zoo, which was kind of fun. I learned some new things about the animals. For instance, giraffes have eyes the size of tennis balls. These kids like to talk, and it was cool to talk with older kids. I went from 5-6 year olds 10-12 year olds. No animal hokey pokey is going to work with these kids. hahaha It was fun to chat with some of them, though. Maddie talked to me a bunch, and she was one that I had met this morning while on before care duty. 

We finished up the day by working on a craft project. A woven basket/pencil holder from newspaper. Quite the time consuming craft project I couldn't even think about attempting with the Kidnergarteners. haha Here's the one I finished up:

It was 4:00 before we knew it. Although I'm a bit sad that I won't get to know some of these 5 and 6 year olds as well, I'm excited to change my routine up a bit this week by helping with the 5th and 6th graders in the afternoon.

At one point this afternoon I saw Alec, a former camper. He had been in our first Splash! week with us this summer along with his twin brother Daniel. He actually saw me first, waved, and said "hey" :-) Later, I saw Kaitlyn, who is one of the kids I worked with at Beyond the Bell this last semester at Longfellow Elementary in Sioux City. It was fun to see her, and she gave me a hug. This reminds me that I forgot to mention last Thursday bumping into Milik, another one of my kids from Beyond the Bell. Funny how I've ran into people I know that are just visiting the zoo.

So I brought back my friend Jeremy's mail for him from school. We met up tonight in Ankeny to make the mail transfer. He suggested this new ice cream place, which I remember seeing when I lived with Kari in Ankeny but never got around to going. It was fun to just catch up with him for a while. I hadn't seen Jeremy since we got out of school back in May. Here's a photo I dug up of us from this last semester seeing as how I've been posting photos of my friends: