Saturday, January 14, 2012

Harry Potter Camp - Day 4 - Care of Magical Creatures

I had grand, grand plans for this day.  I wanted to grab recycling and have the kids build their own magical creatures.  What ended up happening had a far less chance of EMT-involvement.

We kicked off the lesson with, as usual, a PowerPoint presentation, this time focusing on body parts.  It was a bit of an adventure, as, 5 minutes before class, I realized I'd only put in half of the Korean words.  As a result, a lot of the lesson turned into "Who can guess what letter Ms. Royster left out of this word?".  (Side note: I'm grateful I got to be Ms. Royster doing this camp.  I know it's the Korean way, but my ear still hasn't gotten used to "Royster Teacher."  Call me Ms. Royster or 선생님, please, but not the bastard love-child of the two.)  Anyway, I threw in a couple goodies, like "wing," "talon," and "claw," but, as it turns out, the word for talon is the same as the word for claw in Korean - 발톱 - so we had a lot of fun trying to differentiate.  It reminded me of my "ser" and "estar" issues while I was studying Spanish.


Next up was an activity that reminded me of my childhood "Make-Your-Own" obsession (kind of like the broke kid's answer to Tamagatchi).  My poor brother got roped into creating profile after profile for these random creatures we would draw.  (Over time, that morphed into how I would decide who I wanted to date: I'd draw up their profile and then have a visual reference to remind me why I did/did not want to date that person.  I've since stopped being quite so creepy.)  Anyway, its a lot easier to just show you the assignment rather than try to describe it, so I'm just going to post up my two favorites:
This one was drawn by one of my Slytherins, the one who was responsible for pointing out to the rest of them how Slytherins are supposed to behave.  His main frustration with camp is that we only focused on the easy stuff.  He wanted to do things from the later books and movies.  My main frustration was that I couldn't afford to buy him the complete set of the books in English.  He has a high enough level and an obsession with the series to rival my own.  We could be best friends outside of school, I guarantee you that.  Luckily, he's a fifth grader, so I will probably see him next semester.
This one didn't hold any special allure with me, until I got to the answer to the last question.  Apparently, Jesus Himself is imbibed into this creature, and will save us all.  Love it.

The less English-y part of class focused on us making our own dragons (origami).  I felt so bad for my kids, because I am HORRIBLE at origami, and, as such was hopelessly lost at the actual dragon instructions, so, I found instructions on how to make an origami crane, retitled it, and had them do that.  Unfortunately, my kids live in Asia, and, as such, can do that in their sleep.  Fortunately, I was quick-witted enough to tell them to follow the English instructions first, and then they could make any other origami they wanted.  One of the kids was done with her "dragon" before I even finished giving the instructions.  Ah well, after a few flashes of the hands, they had produced these elaborate dragons with curled tails, flapping wings, and I'm pretty sure they breathed fire.  Sadly, I didn't think to snap a picture, because I was too busy dodging it's spiked tail, so I will leave you with a picture of a rather free-thinking Gryffindor's dragons:

I'm not going to lie, that moment may have been one of my most proud.  I love it when they break from the norm.
Here, have some "dragon" instructions.  Now you can be just as lame as I am. ;)


Well, I'm off to pester Charlie to see if he can give me any pointers on making these dragons better.  See you at the top of the Astronomy Tower at midnight.  Try not to drop Norbert on the way.  

<3

No comments:

Post a Comment