Spontaneity in the Creative Process and Teamwork: Week 4 at Overlake's Summer Program

At Overlake’s Summer Program, we are proud that students end the week feeling like they learned something new, whether it’s deepening an existing passion or exploring something new. In addition, teachers find value in integrating various life lessons into their teaching, mixing sprinkles of wisdom into the fun and engaging projects. The two themes we particularly focused on this week were spontaneity in the creative process and teamwork.

The most commonly phrase heard in Dana Len’s 2-Point Perspective: The Magic of Drawing was “don’t think about it too much. Just go for it!” In 2D perspective, the complex rules can seem daunting, but Dana always encouraged her students to not overthink it and to just start drawing. The same goes for Storytelling and Art, where 3rd and 4th graders learned about Zeus, Hermes, and other mythological creatures, using that knowledge to write their own stories. While it seems like stories have to completely be drafted out, sometimes spur of the moment decisions about what to do with your favorite character can make the best, most inventive stories. Students in Outdoor Art explored local trails to work on painting, photography, and sculpting. Because they never knew what they would stumble upon in nature, the camp also challenged students to use what they could find to their best abilities to build natural sculptures or paint watercolor pieces. For this week’s campers, jumping into the creative process and embracing the unknown was rewarding and challenging; we hope it’s something they carry with them in the future!

A major theme in this week’s camps was teamwork and communication. Leadership Camp was comprised of various challenges; regardless of the outcome, Joey Pauley always asked the campers afterwards to reflect on the process. The challenges--such as walking blindfolded and relying on their partners’ verbal guidance, moving all 18 students onto a seesawing platform, and walking on a thin metal wire for several feet--required students to work together to complete the tasks. In Into the Woods, the 3rd and 4th graders built solar panels to roast s’mores in, went around the campus to draw their own maps, and identified the nature that surrounded them. When they were navigating the campus with compasses, they had to trust each other. Our sports camps emphasized the same principles in a different context: In Ultimate, the teams had to communicate effectively about strategy and stay positive when things weren’t going well. In Games Galore, campers were split into teams to play Bocce Ball, Quidditch, dodgeball in the dark, among others. Whatever the game was, teamwork and communication were crucial to success. Our teachers were thrilled to see the progress the campers made throughout the week, and we hope they carry the experiences with them in the future!