Halfway through!

Alex is definitely a handful sometimes.  As in the evaluation from last year, she definitely has trouble with following directions and becomes pouty when she does not get her way.  In the beginning, she had a huge cut on her foot, which she began to use everyday during fun fitness when she did not win certain games.  I began to realize that she definitely was using her foot as an excuse.  As the week went by, when she would use her foot as an excuse (e.g. capture the bacon or kickball), I would over exaggerate her foot and tell her that her foot probably hurt too much to play (which we have talked  about).  This has really worked on her and she does not get as pouty about not winning certain games.  By the end of camp, I would really like to see Alex improve on her emotions by not worrying about always getting what she wants and being able to listen to the counselors a lot better.

ShyAnne is a very vibrant girl.  She sometimes has trouble following directions and staying quiet, while the counselors are speaking, but she does not show many social issues.  She works well with the other girls and is very cooperative in all the activities that we do.  ShyAnne understands when she gets counted and stops whatever she is doing wrong once she is counted.  The only time that I have had to put her on time out was when she hit the ball with the bat and the ball almost hit one of the girls when she was not suppose to be playing.  Once she did that, you could tell that she knew what she did wrong and sat right down quietly for her time out. Besides that, I have not had much trouble with ShyAnne.

On the first day of camp, Hailey walked in with her head down and a frown on her face.  She began each day like that for the first week and did not want to participate in many activities besides fun fitness.  As the 1st wk went by, Hailey started to cooperate with the other campers a lot better.  During one of our group meetings at Longs Park, Hailey also started off the conversation with the other girls by using "I statements," which I thought was quite impressive. Also during the 2nd group meeting, she also opened up a lot more and said she had anger management problems and also had issues at home with her parents.  You can really see her moods change throughout the day and she definitely has trouble controlling her attitude towards the other campers.  She also tends to start up some issues between the girls as well. I would really like to work on her anger by having more talks with her when she gets in one of her moods and have her just talk it out because it seems like she feels a lot better once she gets it all out.  

And Finally...Tessa.  She also had a rough start to camp.  She was very shy and came to camp during the 2nd week so I think she also felt a little left out. I thought that it was really interesting how on the third day of camp for her, she started to cause a little bit of issues within the group.  She would tell me that Brittany and Alex did not like her and said that they did not want her at the camp. She would confront me about this in front of both of them, which showed that it seemed like she wanted more attention from the counselors. This soon passed and Tessa felt a lot better about camp.  Another issue that Tessa has is her idea that she is not liked because of her skin.  I thought it was really interesting that she wrote that also on her camp evaluation.  I also had a one-on-one talk with her one day and that is when she started to tell me that she did not think her parents liked her because they paid more attention to her brother.  She also mentioned that she did not enjoy her last home because of her skin color. I would really like to work on Tessa's perception of herself and help her in knowing that she is such a beautiful girl inside and out!