4 star review = average of 5-star experience and 3-star experience:
5-star: My second grade daughter LOVED her experience at the San Carlos location this summer. The class size was small (just 6 kids split into two teams) and the kids were all in the younger (5-7) range. There was plenty of space for their team to build a city and 2 adults supervising/mentoring at all times. My daughter would come home every day excited about what she had built and what had happened in their community that day (telegrams from people wanting to move to their city, drafting of laws, fires, thieves, lawsuits, etc). We received daily, printed "poll reports" (progress updates) about what they had built and done, which helped us to talk with her about what she was learning. She loved it so much that she asked to sign up for a second summer camp session.
3-star: Our second experience was at the Belmont location. There was quadruple the number of kids but only 3 adults. The tables were so closely packed that kids couldn't work at their cities, as they had in the San Carlos location, but had to take their building boards elsewhere to work. We did not receive any printed reports (just too many teams?), and there seemed to be a lack of accountability required of the kids from the facilitators. My daughter's group built literally NO buildings the first 3 days of camp. They also hadn't drafted their city laws or done the other planning projects given to the kids. As far as I could tell, they had played with LEGO people all day. At the end of each day, their area was strewn with disassembled and discarded LEGO pieces. (Note. The other groups seemed to be functioning fine: building their cities, drafting their laws, responding to the scenarios set up by the facilitators, cleaning up after themselves, etc.)
I thought about pulling my daughter from the camp and asking for my money back, knowing the experience that she *could* have been having, but decided instead to talk it over with her. She expressed disappointment that they had not had any telegrams from the capitol city (i.e. their team had no scenarios to deal with initiated by the facilitators). While I know the Kidizen's philosophy is not to interfere, those co-mayors could have used some motivating, real-world-like consequences for mismanaging their city (e.g. citizens moving out or lawsuits requiring cleanup).
My daughter also expressed that the kids on her team were more interested in playing than in building, but that she wanted to build. We role-played what she would need to say to them. With some assertiveness from my daughter towards her co-mayors, days 4 and 5 were better. They cleaned up their city. She built a couple of buildings, while the others continued to play. By the end of the week she had built something she was proud of and could talk about in the final session. She'd also learned a valuable lesson about standing up to peer pressure. I think a little facilitator intervention and direction early in the week for that team could have gone a long way. read more
