Hi everyone... how are you all enjoying this lovely rainy day?

I just wanted to update the blog with some information I received from Paula about skill swap sessions. Here is what she told me:

A Skill Swap is essentially a fun opportunity for people to quickly and efficiently exchange some skills in a way that celebrates that everyone has something to offer. This can happen in many different ways, depending on the size of the group, the timeline, if it's meant as an introduction to skill swapping or longer sessions...

It has become a staple here at HeartWood and we do everything from one-minute skill swaps, where everyone gets a partner, then one person teaches the other one thing and then they switch after a minute. Or this could be 5 minutes each, or whichever you choose.

Or, everyone can think of one thing they could teach, write these up on a mini-workshop schedule, and then over a series of sessions, the groups would divide and choose something they'd like to learn, attend that session, then all switch to another. This can be done in one or two rounds, or more rounds spread out over time. For example, in a 3 day program, we may schedule 3 opportunities for skill swaps and also schedule them depending on what different people want to offer. For example, if someone wants to offer a warm-up game, then we might put this on the schedule in the morning with the whole group. Or if someone wanted to teach a dance move, we might slot this in at a time when it would seem good to do an energizer or an example of sharing leadership skills.

The skills can be ANYTHING at all! Headstands, tongue-twisters, trivia, basketball move, yoga pose, words from another language, hairstyles, magic tricks, math equations, plant identification, recipes... you name it!

It is often good to do the one-minute skill swap before longer sessions so that people have fun with it and aren't so afraid or stuck on "what will I teach??!"... everyone has something, and with encouragement, everyone can think of at least one thing they could teach one other person. After this introduction, people are usually quite inspired to do more.

When partnering people for a skill-swap, it's also really fun to then combine 2 partners with another 2 partners, and they share the skills they just learned so that now 4 people have 4 new skills. In this case, too, the person who just learned the skill can be the teacher or at least can help demonstrate.

That is the main idea, and it's great to adapt this to whatever suits the group.

So there you go... what are your thoughts on skill swaps? How would you prefer we organize our skill swap sessions for the camping trip: 1 minute swaps, with partners, groups, etc...?

Stay tuned for some pictures!