Our first day was at WALES, since it was a civic holiday and the school can't host us on holidays. In years previous, we've had a day at WALES for Canada Day during Around the World Week, but this year that fell in one of our Training Weeks, so our WALES day got put off until Wacky Water Week.
We played Water Balloon Toss, where people paired up and threw a water balloon between each other. If you caught it without it breaking, you made it to the next round. If it exploded, you stepped out of the competition.With every successful attempt, contestants had to take steps away from each other to increase difficulty. Of the three rounds, I managed to take one win with my partner.
We did water gun painting this day as well. For this activity, we lined up canvases and participants shot paint at them with water guns. First we had the group make a collaborative effort to donate to Extend-a-Family, then everyone got to make their own individual work to take home with them.
We had a water relay race this day as well. The staff member's team that won this competition had a bucket of water poured over them. For some reason, we found an excuse to pour a bucket of water over another staff member as well.
A number of participants missed this day, since it was technically a holiday, When one member asked what she missed, I said "It was the most fun that Summer Program has ever been, or ever will be" to tease her. When she asked for specifics, I mentioned the water balloon toss, the water gun paintings, and the staff getting soaked with buckets of water. This was enough to convince her I wasn't joking when I said this day was the most fun ever.
We got a lot of paint on the area we did our craft. As we were cleaning up, I jokingly mentioned that it was a good thing that we had forgotten to include "Respect school/organization's property" in our Program Guidelines that week. Of course we cleaned up our paint anyway.
Next day we had Sponge Capture the Flag, which was split into four teams, with bean bags representing flags Sponges and water guns were made available to tag people with. This year, we limited the safe zone to a small area around the flag and made most of the playing area No Man's Land to discourage people from guarding their flags.Staff were given water guns to discourage people from playing safely.
Somehow, participants got ahold of water guns and started shooting staff. Everyone started firing on everyone. Some rules continued to be observed, such as some people shouting "SAFE ZONE" when they were in the area that they were not allowed to be fired on. But otherwise, people seemed to generally forget about the objective of stealing bean bags, and fell on the prerogative of soaking opposing teams even without a point system.
Partway through, I had to refill the water buckets and put the temperature on full cold without thinking about it. After a few complaints, people decided to demonstrate their misery by unloading on to me! So most of the formal rules fell away, but the game was still ridiculously fun. Not sure if that makes it a win or a fail.
Wednesday we had Drum Fit, which is usually our Get Your Game On visitor, but this year we had X-Movement so Drum Fit came at this time. We had a fire drill though, which set things back a bit. When we were outside waiting for things to be sorted out, we decided to play a circle game. Asked the participants what they wanted to play, and someone said "Darling If You Love Me" which received a murmur of praise around the circle. Us staff thought we knew all the circle games, but none of us had heard of it.
Super fun. You have someone in the centre of the circle. They choose someone and say "Darling if you love me won't you please, please smile" The person being spoken to must reply "Darling, you know I love you, but I just can't smile." If the person being spoken to smiles, they must replace the person in the circle and attempt to make someone else smile.
Double edged sword because I wanted to go around telling people to tell me they love me, but I also didn't want to lose. I was a pretty cold hearted snake, with only one person able to make me smile.
Drum Fit was fun, as always. It was a bit shorter because of the fire drill. If you don't remember what Drum Fit is, it's an activity where an instructor guides you through practices including an exercise ball and a set of drum sticks. It just seems fun at first, but slowly weans you into more intensive exercises.
Later on that day we played Air Raid, which is basically Mission Impossible with water guns (how can you go wrong?) and we had a tie dye craft. Tie dye was facilitated by two other program leaders while me and another leader were inside hosting games for the group waiting. We played Huckle Buckle, Crocodile's Treasure, and What Time is it Mr. Wolf.
Thursday I got to host the event of the year, Reverse Paintball! This is another annual event in which participants get to paint the staff, then shoot water guns and throw sponges at us to knock the paint off. In years past, participants have just gone crazy with the paint. This year, I basically had to give them permission to put paint in my hair, beard and on my clothes.
I've got my Reverse Paintball shirts from years previous hung up on my wall. First year I wore a white shirt, second year I sacrificed a staff shirt. I had a big dilemma regarding whether or not I should use an orange staff shirt this year. If I used an orange shirt, it would look different from years previous and sort of complete the collection. But I thought the end result had looked better on the white shirt than the staff one. Of course, we were using orange instead of green this year, and I thought orange might make the colours "pop" more than the green ones. But no way orange beats white. White is basically a canvas waiting to be painted on. And I feel there's something fun and disarming for the participants to see us out of our staff shirts.
So I opted to use white. And now that the shirt is dried, I think it looks too much like my Year 1 shirt to display. Kind of regret not using orange.
Our special Friday trip was to Wild Water Works in Hamilton. This is the third time we've been, you might remember me mentioning they have a wave pool, water slides, and a lazy river. I didn't touch the lazy river or water slides this year, I just supported people in the wave pool. Which is fine, it's a pretty amazing wave pool.
Wacky Water Week was crazy fun.
I got Monday and Tuesday off for Prep Week. During the remaining three days, we developed a meal plan, scheduled activities for the Overnight, went grocery shopping, wrote receipts, looked at client files, and did some team building stuff.
During the past two years, one of my breaks has been on the last night of the year. Since we bring a treat back to the team on the night off, I've had to deal with the pressure of delivering the final treat. Not this year.
Grocery shopping is always so much fun, because you get to buy in bulk. Last year I was on the meat cart, which just made me and the person I was with look like massive carnivores. This year I was on grains which just isn't as exciting. We did a lot better with the budget this year.
Last year we let the new people develop the meal plan without being allowed to see the old one, and they basically replicated it exactly. This year we did the same thing, and it's still pretty similar but we did turn out a few new ideas.
Our team building stuff included a lip sync battle, which was super uncomfortable, they made me be Barbie from Barbie Girl and perform in front of one of the Extend-a-Family higher ups. Sadistic. Then we played a game where you are given the name of someone significant from the Summer Program, but you don't get to see it and everyone else is. Then you go around the table asking questions and see if you can figure it out.
Excited for the Overnight. This year both weeks are at Impeesa. They've got a more accessible ramp this year (inconsequential to us since we don't have anyone in wheelchairs, but it's still nice to see) and they put in a new roof. Looks good.
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