Chinese Culture camp

Wyatt, Julia, and I attended a Chinese culture camp today. The organizers did a fantastic job of putting this together. Savannah has attended in the past, and I think, as is true with anything, experience works out kinks and brings new ideas.

This year they started the day by making an edible abacus.

We then visited a drummer who worked on teaching the kids how to tap out a beat and finished with talking about the beat needed to keep the rowers on the dragon boats in sync so they can win the race. I wished Andy had been there for that session for two reasons. The drum was very cool and produced a very nice sound, and Wyatt was very anxious to participate, and he did a very nice job of pounding out a correct rhythm for the song being used. He did tend to go too fast at times, but I think he has an ear for tempo.

We then learned about the Chinese equivalent of Valentine's day which will be celebrated in August this year. Chinese mythology is quite lengthy with complicated stories. In this picture, the kids are making a magpie bridge so that the lovers who are separated in the heavens can meet. The magpies do this once a year in the seventh month on the seventh day, and this is the double 7 festival.

We then went on to learn about the double 5 festival which is the Dragon Boat festival. It is probably being celebrated in China now. On both of our trips to China, this festival was taking place. Again the mythology behind the festival is complicated, but there is a dragon in the water who is frightened by five colors. The children made medallions with five venomous creatures on them to ward off evil spirits. Of course the mythology is interesting and fun to learn, but we are always aware that we do not want to bring false or bad spiritual influence into the lives of our children.

After lots and lots of cool crafts, the kids had lunch and then played games. Wyatt preferred the fishing game while Julia loved a game where rocks were loaded into buckets to make people climb a mountain - set up with pulleys and quite cool. This had something to do with something they learned in a session I did not attend, so I don't really know the story behind it.

The big kids spent the morning decorating dragon boats, so the kids could have dragon boat races during game time.

We had a great, but tiring time. We returned home in time to work in the nursery at church and then headed to a graduation party for our friend Kaleb. It was a nice, mini reunion with members of our old Sunday school class. We sure do miss them all. We are tired and off to bed.