Here we are, evaluating the first day of the Jammin' With the Basics music camp. We had a group of 16 for the morning camp and 8 for the afternoon. The afternoon camp consisted of 6th and 7th grade students. The morning had mostly 5th grade and under with a couple of 6th grade students who struggled a bit last year. We found that we would have had more campers if the beginners weren't going to have their first week of band lessons next week which will bring them back to school most days (we are having the camp at school as well). I guess the scheduling is always the hard part. With most parents both working, transportation to school during the days is an issue.
Our beginner camp made huge strides this morning! It was a zoo some of the time and we learned very quickly that it was better to divide them into two groups. The students that had previous music lessons moved along much more quickly, although the new students also made great progress. We were able to put them together for a drum circle and various rhythm games. We introduced concepts with the large group and then did some work to determine which students were ready to move along to more complicated levels. Since I am team leading with the band director, we each took a group and worked alone with them.
Our afternoon campers reviewed note values, did note identification (all of them learned to read both treble and bass staffs) and worked on music terms and symbols. We did a bell circle which was a big hit. The band director and I had decided to concentrate on rhythms for almost half of the time the students were at the camp. We have a Jammin' Rap that is turning out really well.......and we did many games and races. The time just flew by!
I loved the size of the afternoon camp! We are going to make a few changes for tomorrow morning but other than that, we are very happy with how it is going so far.
Sally Ritchie
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