Day 35: Heidi the Hedgehog Book

This is a very, very special post that I am extremely proud of.

The challenge of day 35 was to create instructions to have someone else make something and try it out.

Now, I do this pretty much every day at camp, but this particular day was something special.

You see, one of our other camp counselors had read the book, 'The Giving Tree' to the kids and we had a discussion about inspirational stories.  On the fly, I decided to have the kids make up their own inspirational story.

The kids went around and each added to the story.  Of course, since I had happened to bring in my hedgehog in that day, the story started with, "Once upon a time... Miss Amy brought in a hedgehog..."

Shockingly, the story did end up turning inspirational (through the help of the counselors) because Heidi the Hedgehog got her head stuck in a tube, and had a cone shaped head.  She didn't think anyone liked her because of her cone head and was sad.  At the end, her friends threw her a surprise birthday party and threw a cake at her face, which made her head return to a normal shape.

Although this story is a silly children's story to an outside eye, we had a blast making it up and listening to the kids each add their own pieces.

Unfortunately, later that day the other counselor got hurt and had to go to the hospital.  She was okay, but of course we had to have the kids make her something to feel better.

A stack of construction-paper cards can only go so far, so the next day I did an activity with the kids.

I wrote each sentence from the story on a small piece of paper (with the page number) and shuffled them, then gave each student a piece of paper.  The students were instructed to write the sentence and illustrate it.  When everyone was done (some counselors and other workers added a few pages in there, too) we put them all together by page number and laminated the front and back cover to make a book.

It was absolutely amazing seeing the silly story turn in to a piece of work that really showed a lot of effort. The best part was seeing each child's individual picture on their own page (with their name).

I gave the book to her parents later that day, she loved it!

It was amazing, and my favorite part of the whole summer.  What a great way for a class to take pride in their work.