(written by Children’s Counselor, Meg Hill)

This morning the kids’ counseling sessions included many awesome activities, one of which I can’t share with you because it is TOP SECRET!  But I will tell you that our topic today was how to deal with anger and sad feelings.  One way that we (the counselors) help kids understand healthy ways to deal with frustration is to talk about volcanoes.  Two ways things that we want to avoid are volcano explosion (like when angry people take their anger out on others) or volcano implosion (like when people are depressed).  The way to best way to get anger out is by letting steam off and venting to prevent volcano problems.

Some ideas the kids came up with on how to let off steam are: naming what you’re really angry about, praying, exercising, talking to someone you trust, expressing yourself through art and music, and laughing and having FUN.  So to practice laughter and fun (after we did our top secret activity which involves smashing things in a goo-ily satisfying way) we played the flour martian pantyhose game.  It is hard to describe this game, but it is so much fun…pantyhose over the head, the foot of the hose filled with flour, swinging the flour-foot around and around with your head and trying to hook onto someone else’s flour-foot.  The kids had a blast, as you might expect.  And as I, the younger kids counselor, peeked out of our room to check on the fun, Mike and Jeremiah and Jamal totally attacked me with flour!!!  Oh, snap.  The gauntlet had been thrown down.

As I went back into the room and the young boys noticed my newly-floured clothing, they informed me that we needed to get revenge.  They were so totally right.  So we plotted and schemed, rubbed our hands together with devious laughter and decided that AMBUSH was the way to go.  Christopher, Carter, Myles, and Jed hid behind the bushes while I sweetly requested for the big guys to come out and help us with something.  Then the little guys attacked.  I am proud to say that we floured Mike and Jeremiah quite nicely.  Jamal almost got away until I attacked him with the whole bag of leftover flour.  Mission accomplished, and the little guys win!