Summer Internship Blog

 For this week of the internship, the kids learned about various forms of art. To do this, the kids performed various arts and crafts alongside a field trip to the Crayola Experience at the Florida Mall. Origami Jumping Frog       When the kids performed art activities, the focus was to highlight            how art is more than just coloring with crayons or painting with              brushes. For instance, we taught the kids about how to make origami    frogs that are capable of jumping. We also showed the kids designs         are put onto fabric. The kids got to practice screen printing onto                  canvas bags they got to keep. Lastly, the activity I think the kids were    challenged by the most is painting in unconventional ways. Whether         it was dragging st...

 This week had a few surprise guests alongside some more experience around teaching kids. Aside from that, this week featured many of the same setups familiar to those who have been keeping up with the blog posts here. Pepper the Possum Our guests featured an archeologist and a visit from the Oakland Nature Preserve. In the archeological lesson, the kids learned about the difficulties of excavating artifacts by trying to carve chocolate chips out of chocolate chip cookies without breaking the cookie too much. The kids also got to look and learn about where archeologists like to look for potential artifacts. The Oakland visitor had a very similar visit to a previous guest. She brought 4 animals for the kids learn about such as a tiger salamander, corn snake, and box turtle. The highlight for the kids was Pepper the Possum. She serves as an ambassador for wild animals taken as pets by people. The possum is believed to have been taken as a baby from the wild. After a year though, the ...

Helmeted Guineafowl at Bill Frederick Park Given the 4th of July break, I'll condense the past two weeks into one blog post. Both of these past weeks had field trips, but I really just served as a chaperone for them. One field trip saw us go to Bill Frederick Park while another had the Florida Film Academy visit the History Center. Both of these field trips had educators from the park and the academy handle the lessons, so we simply watched the kids and made sure they behaved.  Animal Bones (Bear and Cow Skull along with Deer Antler) The class activities for these past two were somewhat similar to previous weeks if you have been reading the blogposts. Both weeks had the kids visit one of the galleries at the history center.  One week had them explore the pioneer gallery and another had them handling some animal bones as a part of an animal focused week. I spent the animal week helping the kids measure their punching power with a sparring tool and then escorting them to Frederi...

I had to take the last week off, but I am back with some exciting events from this week. The theme of this week's camp focused on animals from my understanding. Given the various extra activities on the schedule, I did not get to see all of the scheduled class activities. The kids visited the nature exhibition in order to learn about the natural environments animals live in here in Florida. In terms of the regular class activities, the class created pet rocks and clay animals in order to get them thinking about animals. We also had the kids build spider webs and fly around like hummingbirds to show how animals behave in the wild. While these class activities were fun, the real highlights were the special activities.  Starting with the field trip, this week went to the WonderWorks located on I-Drive. If you haven't been to a WonderWorks before, it is a science museum chain filled with various games. While some of these games are standard games, most of the games feature educatio...

This is the second week of the Summer Camp for the Orange County Regional History Center. Each week of the camp focuses on a different aspect of Florida history. Last week' focused on Florida's tourism. For this week's lessons, the theme was set around the pioneers who built Florida.  As I talked about in my last blog post, the activities at the camp focus on either experience activities and crafting activities. This time around, I will start with the experience activities. I did not get to experience this activity, but the kids focused on acting out a script since famous singer and actress Ariana Grande comes from Florida. The main experience activity I assisted with was another artifact exhibition. This time the exhibition took place in the Pioneer gallery on the 4th floor. This section focuses on the Native American and Pioneer history of the 1800s. During this visit, the kids got to handle several pioneer tools like a teapot, an old-fashioned iron, a hoof knife from the...

This week I began my internship in earnest as part of the Orange County Regional History Center's Adventures in History Summer Camp. During this week, I focused on getting a feel for the needs of the job. My scheduled time runs from 9 am to 2 pm, which covers most of the educational periods for the students. The camp follows a weekly scheduled with each week having a different theme. The activities for this week revolved around tourism in Florida. My job as an educator matched up to what I was expecting after my training day last week. The activities appeared divided into two main types, crafting activities and experience activities.  In the crafting activities, the students would be tasked with crafting, coloring, or building something related to the lesson. During these class activities, my main job involved assisting the kids with tasks that were too difficult or too dangerous for the kids to do on their own. The "danger" in question was a hot glue gun. For legal reaso...