Children are miracles, and when they are learning cool things and being creative, I find them captivating. So as my Easter treat to myself and to them, I went around all the campsites at Gardenfarm today and announed 'At 5oclock I'm leading a haunted caravan reclamation session. Send your kids over, to turn it into a cubby house'.
They did, and here is what happened:
Prelude
I went to my Cathedral (also known as The Garage), where I have towers and towers of resource boxes. Some people call them storage boxes. I catagorized mine to be useful in the mysterious future, so I can launch into projects and hit the ground running. I layed them out, at right angles to each other of course, so the children had lots of materials to choose from when they arrived. There was also a big sheepskin for the various camps grown ups to sit on and bond, if they wanted to. How is it going to go? What if nobody turns up?
Action
Oh, so much fun. I wish there was three of me.
Afterglow
It all worked! We were like ants, and make up the proceedure as we went. The key was giving them operational 'culture set' roles.
- Safty officer - find pointy things, things that will tear or trip. Annouce, or fix them. - Straightener - puts things at 90 degree angles. Also known as Knolling.
- Trash collector - keeps alert for small rubbish, takes it out of workers way
- Gopher - to go fetch what workers need, so they can stay focused.
- Floor monitor - This was the only unpopular, unclaimed job. Unlike Japan, our culture has no floor awareness. Its where everything goes when they loose interest, to get trampled. I will make it 'runway master' next time, so that sucess can happen at least in walkways.
- Washerpeople - do their thing with brushes, sponges and soapy water.
Here are my Easter Saturday conclusions for how to hold a creation session
1. It was perfect to decide to do it and do it at virtually the same time. It kept expectations and pressure low. The well-designed, well-stocked garage made the short preperation possible.
2. Choose good names.
'Tidy the caravan' isn't nearly as fun as 'Haunted Caravan reclamation'. 3. Give everyone a role they can succeed in, a role that sets the work culture.
4. Children can be unattractive (to me) when they are unengaged, or caught up in addictions such as iPads. Yet when they are being truly useful, they are adoreable. Lets make sure this happens more often, because they love being useful, and love being adored.