-3-
35
that out of 59 children, 32 had both parents in Camp; 3 the Mother and a step-father, 22 the Mother only and 1 the Father only.
There was 1 war-orphan. It is not surprising that the Staff found the children rather noticeably lacking in powers of concentration, attention and initiative nor that child after child is described as "nervous" or "highly-strung.
11
The vocabulary of newly admitted groups deteriorated from year to year;
reflecting ever more exclusively the limited experiences of Camp life. The names of many common objects had no meaning. Nursery stories meeded simplification and explanation. Even the older children would ask for a story to be repeated again and again and showed little of the usual avid desire for something new. The large proportion of children in the upper groups unwilling to attempt to express themselves in writing or drawing, and showing a preference for the more mechanical activities such as spelling and arithmetic, bore evidence to weak imaginative powers and general lack of confidence.
The school was ill-equiped to counteract the deadening influence of out-of-school, existence. Five classes of from 9 to 14 children were held in one Hall, which was also the entry to a residential block and housed a library. Owing to the many claims on the use of this Hall, only two hours on five mornings a week could be reserved for the .school. This meant a drastic cutting down of the normal curriculum, particularly for older children. There was a shortage of every kind of apparatus, equipment and material. Paper, pencils and crayons were at first supplied by Miss Atkins of S. Stephen's Girls' College who had brought a stock into Camp. Thereafter they were obtained, in ever decreasing and always inadequate quantities, through the Education Committee from the Red Cross Organisation or the Camp Supplies Officer. We received in the first year a dozen pairs of scissors, a dozen coarse needles, some embroidery silk, a little plasti cene and some building blocks. These were later supplemented by needles, beads, bead frames, weaving frames and building blocks made in the Camp Workshops, and by clay dug in Camp.
For books we were indebted to American friends who made gifts when they left to be repatriated in 1942, to the Red Cross Society and to private donors. The collection was scanty and the only text- books the children had were readers, most of which were unsuitable.
The staff made Kindergarten Apparatus and found material for paper folding, cutting and pasting from collections made in Camp of parcel wrappings, the labels from food packages and tins, and so on. The lack of handwork material was most seriously felt by the older children who had reached the stage when they should have been enjoying the satisfaction of using tools' to make articles demanding sustained effort and some degree of finish.
Singing was a form of expression in which the children excelled. They were fortunate in having a gifted musician, Mrs. Drown, to teach them.