Collecting Toy Soldiers Summer Camp

If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life.

My summer job epitomizes that oft quoted line.  I am very fortunate to be involved with Barstow School's Summer Program.  The images in this post are all from events that happened in the summer of 2015.

Soccer Guys on a gridded pitch.  Using Soccer World Tactics game rules and miniaturizing the game of soccer.  I used this in a Chess camp to show the ability to recognize moves from a variety of angles and distances.  Looked pretty cool and the kids hopefully transferred some of the skills.

We called it Soccer Chess.

Working with the very young.

Collecting Toy Soldiers Camp.  

I put together a one week half day experience for grades 3-8 students that wanted to see into the hobby of collecting toy soldiers and gaming with them.

We discussed being drawn into the world of miniatures and I told the parents that this camp session should come with a warning label "This hobby may last into their adult years, consume all of their time, and develop lifelong friendships."

We covered WWII as a look into skirmish gaming.  Prior to this scenario the whole week was spent on Horse and Musket era troops and tactics.

All miniatures are 54mm bucket of soldier variety.  Terrain in all cases is made from corrugated cardboard.  This is cheap and can be made very serviceable for all ages gaming.

I have been at Barstow now for five years and knew that I would be teaching on the top of student desks.  If you look under most of the setups the desks are small pushed together variety of student seating.  Prior to camp I made 3 foot x 3 foot plus cardboard "battle boards."  These are from a futon carton that I found in my neighborhood.  I roll painted green and brown and black latex house paint onto these to make a quick terrain.

In this image you can see our American Civil War campaign map.  Also just visible is my week outline.  We covered: Miniatures, Order of Battle, Rules for moving, firing and skirmishing with troops and how this differed from "sandbox" play.  We built terrain and I showed them how to make a quick fold and cut house that served well for general buildings in the civil war.  We discussed and demonstrated map movement and then placement from the map onto a tabletop battlefield.  We also kept track of force damage from turn to turn to reflect a campaign setting.

Quite possibly a Quincy Crossing battle.

This is one of the battles fought at Brown's Ford.

I used Joseph Morschauser's rules for Horse and Musket.  The battleboards however were built with One Hour Wargames in mind.  I am also using them for a Mechwarrior campaign.

More ACW action.

When we discussed miniatures we talked about creating units that represented historical opponents.  There was a lot of painting during the week with painted troops taking part in a battle the next day.

Next summer the camp will morph into one week of American Revolution, one week of American Civil War, and one week of World War II.  Is it silly to be anticipating next summer already?

Thanks for looking in.  Leave a comment for encouragement.