Follow-ups on Summer Clubs

Spy Club

Two months after the conclusion of Spy Club, my son is recruiting friends for a new session. I guess I should take that as a good sign. He's assuming I want to do it again. Due to busy schedules, we were unable to stage our Grand Finale, so I cannot report how that went; but what I do want to report is how the week-to-week sessions went.

If I were to do it again, I would be much more selective with who we invited, we just invited everyone we'd normally want to include in our playtime. I did send everyone home early on one occassion because some of the boys said that it was boring and why did they have to be here and they'd rather be tortured in other ways (Alright, I did make that last part up and these statements may really be a commentary on how I teach, but that's not the point here). Many weeks I felt I had to struggle with the same couple of boys, but for some reason they kept coming back. A couple of the other boys loved everything they could get from it and wanted more. (And I discovered I still have a little bit of that sneaky nature I had as a kid! Yikes!)

Girls Club

I didn't know this when we began, but there are actually American Girl clubs, or at least used to be; the Pleasant Company is no longer chartering any clubs, but that's okay, because my goals were different from theirs.

If I were to do this one again, I would have a smaller group to work with. The girls were much easier for me to work with, but there were often 10-12 girls, ages 5-11, which created opportunities for cliques to form (if you can believe that!). I also realized that the two five-year olds would be less engaged by many of the activities, so it's the older girls I am referring to.

I would also have more expectations for the group. Although my daughter and I were reading the Kit books, the others were not and so the activities were without context and difficult to appreciate as much without understanding the circumstances from which they arose. So I would have them read the books (one a week) and include discussion in our agenda. I might even go as far as have the girls take a turn preparing a game, activity, craft, or food to bring to our meeting; or, in some cases even have the parents pay for materials cost (though I'd really not like to do that).

In both of these, I wanted to put as little pressure on the others' parents as possible and just have the kids come and have fun, both structured and unstructured; but as a result, I believe the kids had less reason to want to participate fully because it wasn't their club (I know I should know this already). Incidentally, I tried to have the girls plan the party and bring the food for our final meeting, the Garden Party, but as a result, some did not come, leaving us without some of our items; and others' parents were a little put off at having to supply food for it. For the former, we had an opportunity for making do with what we had.

I want to note also that I began the summer intending to have a "Musical Club" as well. I got the the idea from an LDS-HEA conference I'd attended a couple of years ago at which Janeen Brady, the composer, spoke on telling the LDS story in musical form. Unfortunately, this was a flop, probably because I was the only one who really wanted to do it. We had children show up the first session, fewer the second, and none the third. So I'll have to put more thought into this idea before I'd try carrying it out again.

In conclusion, IF I were to do anything like this again, I would 1) be more selective in who we invited; 2) invite a smaller group to participate; 3) expect more of the kids in preparing for each meeting; and 4) make sure it's something the kids want to do, not just me (I get to tell them what to do all the rest of the time, right?).