posted
My after-school program has decided to start color war in March. We are not quite doing it in the traditional camp sense, but as more of a child development/management tool. We have been having huge problems with our kids acting out, being disrespectful, and just plain trashing the place. We're spending all of our time and energy disciplining and we're sick of it.
Maybe you're not disciplining effectively, you might say. You would be absolutely right. YMCA policy prohibits us from using any disciplinary method other than redirection. We can't even use time-outs. Before the semester started, we were told to stop sending so many notes home - apparently, parents don't want to know when their children are disrespecting us or otherwise misbehaving. We have to limit our notes to "truly heinous behavior." Our program is what’s known as a “last chance” program. We have 120 kids enrolled and a good quarter of them have been kicked out of every other after-school program in town. Redirection just doesn’t work for us.
The program we’re doing is more like the Hogwarts house system. There will be 4 teams and each child will be assigned to a team by us (and we’re looking forward to breaking up some cliques). Each team has a color and a core value. Red is caring, yellow is respect, green is responsibility, and blue is honesty. These are already the colors/values of our Y, so it works out nicely for us. We will assign and revoke points based on a number of factors, behavior being a big one. They will earn extra points for demonstrating the core value of their team. The main way they’ll earn points is by doing our day-to-day activities (homework, art projects, sports) properly.
Then there are the special activities that we want to plan. We don’t do homework on Fridays, so we want that to be our special event day. We’ve already talked about the usual talent shows, academic quiz games, etc. I’d love to hear more ideas from Jatraqueros.
I’d also like to hear about any other ideas you have that can help us and about your own color war experiences. We have a budget of $0.00, limited access to the athletic fields, and a very small center. We do have unlimited access to the gym, but those are our only assets. If only we had a wheelbarrow. Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
Maybe you can do a sort of Olympics? Have members of each color group compete in different events: broomstick hockey; limbo; speedwalking; 3-legged race; relay race; water balloon volleyball; human pyramid building; seeing who can build the tallest free-standing tower out of 6 paperclips, 2 toothpicks, and 2 pieces of paper; identifying star constellations (off a star chart) made from people holding glow-in-the-dark stars; spelling bee; stick horse jousting (each player has to hold a stick horse in one hand and retain possession of some sort of ball - football, basketball, etc. - while jousting with a toilet plunger); seeing who can recite some nursery rhyme, limmerick, song, etc. the most times in one breath; push-up competitions; sit-up competition; standing long-jump; bean bag shot-put; pictionary; charades;
Those were some of the low/no cost ideas I could think of. Is that the kind of thing that would be helpful? I'm not quite sure exactly what you're looking for.
Posts: 5879 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
What about fundraising for a charity or doing some sort of community service of a Friday? Maybe organizing a cleanup of a park or riverside. The teams could earn points for the most trash picked up or something..
Posts: 3141 | Registered: Apr 2000
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This sounds like what we did at my camp, and it really was great. We had huts instead of colors but it's the same idea. You were always trying to win honor hut.
We had a song competition. Almost everyone took a well-known melody and put new words to it about how great your hut was. Then you practiced and memorised it and performed it on song night, competing against the other huts' songs.
Another thing was showing hut spirit. Anytime you were waiting in line with your hut anywhere outside you were meant to be singing hut songs very loudly. Sometimes two huts would be milling around the same area together and get in a shouting contest trying to sing so loudly they drowned each other out. Don't know if your local noise restrictions will allow this.
We had a traditional pageant at the end of each camp session, in which the search for the holy grail was reenacted (it was a Methodist camp). There were tryouts for the parts, with the greatest honor being to play Galahad. That would be big time points for your hut if you were picked. After grail night, you were supposed to be very quiet, because it was just so holy. You were supposed to be reverent. So another thing we competed on was how quiet the hut could be.
Other than that, there were a lot of athletic competitions, and also another traditional night, Indian night, where we competed for parts in this traditional dance around the campfire.
Now that I think of it, none of that really applies directly, but it was great fun and we ALL bought into it so hopefully that will give you some ideas, at least. Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
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ludosti, those are great. We can't let them have broomsticks or plungers because they will inevitably hurt themselves or their friends. (Last week a 4th grader poked himself in his own eye with a stick ON PURPOSE. Luckily he missed and jabbed himself just below the eyelid.) The other stuff sounds like a lot of fun.
Jenny, I love the idea of them doing community service. Especially since they all have problems with entitlement. We might not be able to do it because of licensing, but I'll check.
aka, we definitely want them to be spirited and to compete for honors. I really like the idea of culturally-themed events.
Keep the ideas coming, y'all.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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How about a rule that they can capture the other teams colors by out-virtue-ing them? I hope also you have mixed types in all groups. How are the groups to be chosen?
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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The counselors are choosing the teams. We're busting up cliques and splitting up the athletic kids, the artistic kids, the troublemakers, etc. We're not allowing any child to switch teams for any reason.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
they arent capturing or trading people, they are capturing and trading colors.
You put like ten (or 20) ribbons of the respective color on each team's chart. (these charts should be movable so you can take them outside too).
Then if teams are playing in a head to head game, and one team demonstrates bad sportsmanship they lose one of their ribbons to each team involved. Only by an example of kindness or caring or good sportsmanship can they earn their ribbons back.
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We can't even use time-outs. Before the semester started, we were told to stop sending so many notes home - apparently, parents don't want to know when their children are disrespecting us or otherwise misbehaving. We have to limit our notes to "truly heinous behavior." Our program is what’s known as a “last chance” program. We have 120 kids enrolled and a good quarter of them have been kicked out of every other after-school program in town. Redirection just doesn’t work for us.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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