Time for day camp again! It was my 12th camp to plan in 11 years. I realized that this year that I've been doing camp longer than the cubs that are now attending (ages 6-10) have been alive, wild! The month leading up to camp is always extremely busy. The children get tired of me buying fun things and treats and hearing, "It's for day camp". I tell them to just assume that everything that comes that looks like something neat is for camp. Camp definitely takes less planning than it used to since so much of it carries over from year to year but the classes are new each year. I have to plan 22 different classes, make sure the instructions for the activities are clear, and purchase all the supplies for the classes.
This year our theme was Outer Space. I had a lot of fun developing an outer space program. I found lots of ideas that I organized on Pinterest. Here's my board with 209 pins! I'll give an overview of the classes later. This year, the favorite class was our obstacle course, which I titled Jedi Training. I think it was a favorite because the boys got to make pool noodle light sabers.
My friend Audrey Schilatey painted the mural above on a 4' x 8' piece of plywood (it doesn't look like plywood anymore does it). We used in the center of our gathering area to hide all my PA paraphernalia.
Our secretary's pack did an outer space blue and gold pack meeting and gave us all their left over planets. The camp director, Lisa Johnson, has a vinyl cutter so she fancied this planet up for camp.
The big build this year was this rocket. It had been an old oil tank that we pulled from the swamp next to our house and totally transformed. Dode was 100% responsible for the rocket. The boys spent lots of times playing in it. The plan was to always have adult supervision at the rocket so no one would get hurt. After our Saturday night parent orientation, I walked up to the rocket to find it absolutely jam packed with scouts, inside, standing on the back, standing on the top, hanging from the front. I told them, "The rocket is closed. Everyone out." Boys started climbing out and I realized that the rocket wasn't just full of the scouts I could see, there were two boys crouched down in the front and two crouched down in the back. We were way over capacity! I learned that I needed to ask a youth helper (teenager) to sit on the ladder and keep boys off of the rocket during the opening and closing parts of camp or we'd have things like that happen again.
I didn't get any photos of it at camp. Here it is at its permanent home, on top of our hill.
Darth Vader watched over camp all week. It was funny to drive in in the morning and see his life sized self standing watch over camp. The cubs loved pushing the buttons on his control panel to make him talk and amazingly the batteries lasted all week. I'm pretty proud of how my home built Vader turned out. Here's how I made him.
One of our lunch time presentations, a mad scientist
.
I've seen some videos of Steve Spangler doing science demonstrations on the Ellen show and thought it would be fun to do something similar at camp. Here's one you can watch if you'd like.
My friend Brian Murray agreed to come up and do the presentation. He was amazing! In the photo above, he is holding a quart jar filled with water above the cub scout's head. Air pressure is holding a piece of paper to the bottom so that the water doesn't flow out. He's getting ready to remove the paper and wonder of wonders, nothings comes out because there's a screen across the opening. He also did something similar to the air blasters you can see in the Ellen show clip and he demonstrated the Bernoulli effect with a leaf blower and a beach ball. The hardest part for me with the demonstration was boys rushing the "stage". I had to keep stopping Brian to walk up front and tell the boys, "Go back to your seats." They were so excited they just couldn't do it. I knew I had a lunch time presentation later in the week that included a magic trick so after the mad scientist chaos, I spray painted a line in the grass that they could not go beyond. Problem solved!
Isaac and I bringing around the snack wagon. We hand out snacks twice a day. I've found that the boys are really hungry about an hour into camp. We also send a snack around the last hour of camp, when people are getting tired and grumpy. He's modeling the hat I wore all week.
Our snacks for the week:
Pretzels and string cheese
Tortilla chips and salsa
carrot muffins (parents baked for us)
Apples and granola bars
oranges and sandwich crackers
leftover granola bars and sandwich crackers with go-gurt
popcycles
Lisa's daughter Kayla and my daughter Miriam being the jesters so the boys can tell jokes and receive a piece of laffy taffy. Miriam liked being the jester so much that she missed the classes she could have gone to one day just to be the jester!
practicing for their flag ceremony
I love to see how seriously the boys take their roles when it's their turn to be the color guard.
We have different riddles every day. When they solve the riddle, they get a piece of candy. Here is Thursday's riddle:
Aliens Among Us: Can you identify these aliens?
1.
I came to Earth as a baby from the planet Krypton. I disguise
myself as a newspaper reporter.
2.
I came to Earth to collect specimens and was left behind by my ship.
I was found by a group of children. I have a fondness for Reese's
Pieces.
3.
I was created as the result of a science experiment. I have the
ability to be cute and charming, but also can be very destructive.
4.
An evil villain who wants to take over the universe, I am the sworn
enemy of the galactic alliance.
5.
I am a super intelligent alien who came to earth as an infant and
now lives in Metro City. I begin my life as a villain but through a
series of experiences, I become a hero.
6.
We are very handy and and have a telepathic link to one another,
powered by the Uni-Mind.
7.
I am a hairy, non-English speaking co-pilot to a man who saved my
life. I am always armed.
These riddles were definitely age specific. None of the children could get the second riddle while all the adults thought it was easy. Few of the adults could get the fifth but Metro City gave it away for the cubs. The third riddle was hard for everyone. I thought it was easy, but I must just love that movie a lot!
The thing Dode was happiest about this year, and that took many many hours, was the trailer he built to haul stuff back and forth. It began life as a boat trailer but he's turned it into a flat bed trailer that held everything we needed to bring to camp, with room to spare.
See how big it is? It absolutely dwarfs my cargo trailer.
We could have fit everything in his new trailer but I insisted I wanted to take my cargo trailer to use as an "office". Two trailers to haul to camp with only one van with a hitch, what to do? He went to the junk yard and found a hitch for our little van. He tested the new hitch out with our bike rack when he and Isaac went to Canada for their high adventure. The cargo trailer really jerks the little van around, but we didn't have any problems getting everything out to camp this year. As we packed up when camp was finished Thursday night he said, "I love my trailer!" Usually our cargo trailer is stuffed, the van is stuffed, his pick up is more than stuffed, the children are packed in with things under, on and over them, and we barely fit everything in. This year we had extra room in the trailers and we had nothing in the van but kids.
It was a successful year. We never had a cub scout have to come to headquarters for a disciplinary time out. We didn't have any adults get overly frustrated and loose their cool. We passed our inspection to be a nationally certified camp. But, it was a very exhausting year for me. I don't think I ever got more than five hours of sleep a night the week leading up to and the week of camp. I'd be in bed for longer than that, but I'd spend hours with my brain spinning. I'm finally feeling like I've got my energy back. And, I've already got a Pinterest board going for 2014!
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