One day in the life of the camp

July 24, 2013

Wake up

The morn­ing began with loud knocks at the door, because the duty group decided to wake us up in this way. But it did not hap­pen every day, some­times knocks were gentle and kind. It depends on the upbring­ing of people who wakes up. After all, the first law of our camp is «Do all your activ­it­ies in the cre­at­ive way!» and the second law is «Take care about every­one!». But word «Cre­at­ive» does not mean loudly and sharply. Some­times, the door opened and the rep­res­ent­at­ives of the duty group said: «Good morn­ing! Please, wake up!». And then we had a great start of the day!

Morn­ing exercises

Des­pite the som­no­lence and wear­i­ness, which have remained since the pre­vi­ous day, all chil­dren have gone to morn­ing exer­cises. Morn­ing exer­cises def­in­itely exhil­ar­ate us. It is not only pleas­ant but also very use­ful to do morn­ing exer­cises in the open air, near the beau­ti­ful lake and sur­roun­ded by pine forests and wild flowers.

Break­fast

After morn­ing exer­cises, which woke all of us up, we went for break­fast, because we needed to have the strength for fur­ther les­sons in study groups. We usu­ally have por­ridge at break­fast. Rus­si­an por­ridge rather dif­fer from Span­ish por­ridge. We usu­ally boil cer­eals in Rus­sia, but in Spain they do not boil cer­eals, they eat dry cer­eals with milk or juice. But if we take a good look at the guys from oth­er coun­tries, we could see that they have already learned to eat Rus­si­an porridge.

Les­sons in study groups

Math study groups are well rep­res­en­ted in our camp, because math is main­stream here. Chil­dren are dis­trib­uted in four groups, accord­ing to their pri­or know­ledge and know­ledge of the Eng­lish. Classes are divided into the­or­et­ic­al lec­tures and prac­tic­al problem-solving.

A small amount of par­ti­cipants of the pro­ject takes part in human­it­ari­an study group.

Mod­ule 1: the­or­et­ic­al lectures

Math lec­tures are held for indi­vidu­al study groups and also for all par­ti­cipants of the camp. Lec­tures are giv­en by pro­fess­ors of dif­fer­ent uni­ver­sit­ies and rep­res­ent­at­ives of Rus­sia and oth­er coun­tries. Many lec­tures are in Eng­lish, but trans­lat­ors are worked in each group and if some­thing is not clear, then you could always get an advice. Chil­dren have got some idea of ​​the dif­fer­ent areas of mod­ern maths and prac­tic­al using of it, for example, in medi­cine or cryptography.

Mod­ules 2 and 3: prac­tic­al stud­ies aimed to solve problems

The main com­pon­ent of the major­ity math­em­at­ic­al activ­it­ies is prob­lem solv­ing. Prob­lems are giv­en in por­tions. Stu­dents solve these prob­lems and tell their solu­tions to teach­ers in a per­son­al capa­city, so, in such a way chil­dren learn to gen­er­ate ideas and cor­rectly for­mu­late them. At the end of classes teach­ers tell right solutions.

Addi­tion­ally, vari­ous math­em­at­ic­al games are held: car­rou­sel, math battles and dom­in­oes, dur­ing which chil­dren divide into teams and solve problems.

In the human­it­ari­an group, as usu­al, we have to pub­lish a news­pa­per. I note that it is very dif­fi­cult. All people can­’t get any­thing done dur­ing pub­lish­ing of the news­pa­per, so the mer­cury is rising. But still our efforts were not in vain: the news­pa­per pub­lishes every day.

One group is writ­ing the art­icle. The second group pub­lishes a new issue of the news­pa­per. The third group provide a work­ing mater­i­al for the news­pa­per, includ­ing photographs.

The fact is that in our camp we have a law: «ROTA­TION of tra­di­tion­al assign­ments.» This law must work through­out camp and in all. And, accord­ing to this law, the groups have to write their art­icles and bring them to us. But this has happened only when duty group had respons­ible lead­er and help­er of leaders.

Lunch

After classes in study groups, we go for lunch.

Free time

Usu­ally we have an hour or an hour and a half, when we could to have a rest. But it is a rel­at­ive free­dom because someone is going to lan­guage classes, someone does group’s assign­ments, someone writes an article.

Today almost nobody had such time. After eat­ing, we were going to the group’s places, because we had to do a movie. It should be reminded that the activ­ity asso­ci­ated with the film fest­iv­al is the com­mon col­lect­ive cre­at­ive even­ing activ­ity, the essence of which to present the best doc­u­ment­ary films about the camp. This is a fairly dif­fi­cult job: to come up with script, to think about cos­tumes, make dec­or­a­tions, mount the film. But also it’s very inter­est­ing, I think every­one would like to make your own movie or play in someone else’s.

And finally we had long-awaited free­dom! Once we have «filmed» all, we divided with a group, because we had an «activ­ity of choice». It means that every­one chooses what he will do: play sports, learn lan­guages or just relax and have a rest.

Com­mon activity

Next, we are going with our groups to the «Rope Course». It is called «Rope Course», because the group moves in the camp, hold­ing hands, as if a rope bundled us. The aim of this organ­iz­a­tion and the busi­ness game — check how the group ral­lied, and how suc­cess­fully passed the pro­cess of team build­ing. It was a pretty dan­ger­ous event. The course con­sisted of six sta­tions: «banana», «trust fall», «Run­ning on waves», «walk with blind», «beam», «spider web». For example, at the sta­tion «Run­ning on waves» all people stay in two lines, face-to-face and put their hands on each oth­er­’s shoulders. After that one per­son has to pass through the hands of all group. So every mem­ber of the group does it in turn. And at the sta­tion «beam» it was neces­sary to intro­duce a burned bridge across Moun­tain River over a huge abyss and team had to quickly move from one river­side to the oth­er that no one is left in the lurch. We need to trans­port invalu­able cargo of spe­cial pur­pose that could not afford to help their arms or legs. But here’s the prob­lem: we did not have beams to restore the bridge, and it was decided to use your own body to do this. And just like that cargo delivered to their destination.

The group’s time

After quite a dan­ger­ous course we are going back to our group place and we now are mount­ing films, which were filmed in the afternoon.

And with already ready films we are going to the Film Festival!

Even­ing event

To begin with, each group had a spe­cial task to pre­pare the clos­ure of film fest­iv­al. I will tell you that every activ­ity is pre­par­ing by a spe­cial group called «Coun­cil of activ­ity», which comes up with a script and dis­trib­utes tasks. Some were dec­or­ated con­cert hall, oth­ers came up with links (games, small com­pet­i­tions), which should have been in the inter­vals between films and, of course, we had the finale. Of course, there were atten­ded stars such as Robert Downey Jr., Steven Spiel­berg and many oth­ers. My col­league the journ­al­ist Sophia Zima describes this event: «What did not happened! Love story, com­edy, horror…»

And almost all things are ready, time to start. Emcees came on the stage and they presen­ted to us the fam­ous jury. We star­ted from the trail­er of first group, but fur­ther the film failed to show due to tech­nic­al prob­lems. But this was only intrigued the audi­ence! We played in the fam­ous games: «Simon says», «Aram-Zam-Zam» and oth­ers games. It was fun! After that star­ted the show­ing of the film of the second group — Love Story with ele­ments of Com­edy. We laughed at so inter­est­ing and even a true story of love and, of course, be touched by happy ending.

And finally — we watched the film of the first group, which so long could not see. It was a per­fect mont­age of hor­ror «Girls VS Zom­bies» with a sweet and unex­pec­ted end. The film of the fourth group showed to chil­dren the dif­fer­ence between pess­im­ists and optim­ists. Who is still bet­ter to be? About this every­one had to think and make their own conclusion.

The fifth group told us the story of «Walk­ing man», whose feet are con­stantly in motion. He could not sleep, stand­ing near the mir­ror and even just to put on his socks! It was insanely hil­ari­ous film, one of the best! All laughed heartily.

The film of the sixth group had sur­prised us by its ori­gin­al­ity and this film showed us the true love and the oppor­tun­ity to fight for your ador­a­tion. Even if the object of ador­a­tion is a broom.