Daily Routine for the Florida Camp, E-Kill-A-Kid
6.30 Chief (counselor) wakes up to prepare for the day. During this time the Chief goes around, unlocks the toolboxes, sets out the cleaning materials, and checks on the bedwetters. If a kid did pee in his bed the Chief will wake him up early to make sure his sheets and blankets get bagged up in a biohazard bag to be taken down to the laundry room for washing.
(the camp in florida generally has one of the cook do all the washing of clothes and sheets and so forth)
7.00 The kids are woken up and they are given 20 minutes to get dressed, get their beds made, square away their foot lockers, straigthen their personal area, sweep out their tents, and police around them for trash.
7.20 Back to crappers. The florida health department required all the camps in florida to install plumbing for the toilets to prevent e-coli poisoning. Probably not a bad idea considering the whole business with E-coli at PV. A team of boys, changes on a regular basis, will empty the urine buckets into the toilets, scrub out the toilet stalls, and mop them out.
(urine buckets: each tent has a bucket for the kids to piss in at night. It sits out from of the tent and they merely step out and drain the snake when they have to go.)
7.30 Nightly Site: The coals and ashes from the previous night's fire are collected from the fire pit. In the group of Chawkebans we used five masonry blocks to make this pimp looking pentagon thing. I never did tell anyone it had more to do with a passing fancy of mine involving wicca than anything else. None the less they collect the coals, and build a new nightly fire out of pieces of wood that are cut and prepared each day. During this the rest of the boys set their daily goals. These are supposed to be meaningful, accomplishable, and desirable. However, this generally means they mumble some shit to get their day over with.
7.35: Front Chores: The kids troop it to the front of our campsite and do our front area chores. I won't go through them all but essentially they clean the kerosene night light, fill the trail lamps with kerosene, sweep out the buildings, prepare more wood for the nightly fire, and a few other things.
7.45 to 7.50: Go down to the Chuckwagon to set the table for breakfast. During the walk down the trail the group will stay close and be motivated. To be motivated they'll sing trail chants to announce to the rest of the camp that they are on time and ready for their day.
8:00: The table setters go in and set the table.
8:15: Breakfast, served by the chief in a family style dining arrangement. The groups are not allowed to interact so no point in buffet style cooking.
8:45 Breakfast Table is cleared by table setters, the boys, counselors, and whoever else is around use the song books provided to each group to sing songs. The theory was to keep the boys occupied so they aren't causing trouble.
9:00 to 10:00 Chuckwagon and Doing the Board: Chuckwagon is an afterbreakfast educational session put on by one of the Resource teachers, Doing the board is simply where each group tells a Master Counselor what they are doing for the morning.
10:00 to 11:45: Morning activities.. This can be campsite tent building.. campsite projects.. going to the ceramics and woodshop.. Library time.. doing menus and/or daily plans.. all sorts of things...
12.00 to 1.00: Same as breakfast, with the exception that the educational activity is shorter.
1:30 to 2:30: Siesta.. boys are allowed to sit or lay in their beds. They can read, write, or sleep. They can not talk to each other at all. Sometimes the resource teacher comes around and does learning logs.. this is where the kids who want to catch up on their studies go to the Chuckwagon tent (the campsite dining hall.. think big assed tent with dinner table in it) and do some study time with the resource teacher.
2:30 to 5.00 afternoon projects, showers, and games.
5:00 to 7:00 repeat of breakfast and lunch, with a longer chuckwagon that is put on by a counselor.
7.00 to 9:00 The boys go back to campsite, eat snack, use the toilet, have their nightly pow wow (go to the nightly site, start the fire, evaluate goals and do the serenity prayer), and after all of this the smart chief would hustle everyone to their tents. During this time the chief does a last med call where he/she hands out any OTC meds that the kids might need (rash ointment... etc.)
Now.. keep in mind that before and after every single activity the group does a huddle. They evaluate the activity by saying one thing that went well and one thing they can improve on. This is for everything.. walking to the dining hall... everything.
I'm curious to see how this schedule differs from E-Hunt-Tee schedule.
2.30 to 4.30 Afternoon projects.. same sort of thing as the morning.
