Establishing the Ground Rules for Jesus’ Camp
On the second day of camp I took out a whiteboard and marker and said, “Jesus is the King of the People of Praise and of these houses on Yale Street. He’s the King of this camp, and we need to do things his way. What do you think Jesus’ rules are for this camp?” Starting with “leaders”, I asked them how they thought Jesus wanted them to behave. There was a long silence, with thirteen girls staring and their hands and the picnic table. Eventually one of the girls said, “Obey them?” and I wrote it up. Soon the others were attracted to the idea of making the rules and seeing them scribed, so they starting raising their hands. “Don’t hit them.” “Don’t trick them” “Don’t talk back.” We went on to relating with friends: “Help them” “Talk about your problems” “Say ‘Please forgive me” and “I forgive you’” Jesus’ rules about words were, “No name calling” “Please, Thank you, You’re welcome” “Talk nice”. The rules for property were “Don’t take stuff without asking” “Clean up after yourself” and a little leader instruction to stay off the porches. I copied them onto paper and we tied them to a tree every day as a reminder.
From then on I was careful to catch kids following the rules: “Did I just hear you say ‘thank you’?!! What great words!” And, “Thank you for obeying me right away, even when you wanted to keep playing with the bean bags!” At the natural break of snack time we talked about how we’d seen each other following the rules, and the girls volunteered that they’d seen each other and themselves waiting nicely for the jump rope, helping each other with the play dough, and saying nice words. One of them said, “I saw you (Miss Claire) following the rules!” “What was I doing?” “You was leading us!”
According to the Action team staffers, some of the girls have been imitating me in congratulating each other on good behavior. “You’re following Jesus’ rules!”
A team member witnessed two of the preschoolers coloring, and one took the other’s marker. The bereaved one said, “We don’t do that in Jesus’ camp!” and the other said, “oh, sorry” and gave it back.
Besides the first day of camp (before the ground rules had been established), there were no arguments between girls, which I gather is a pretty huge success. Glory!