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 And so began one of the most successful and fun adventures we, as grandparents, have ever done! |
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2011: YEAR 6
This year started like the last two – with a loud, smoky firecracker display–at 7:55 a.m., if you please. Our 15 year-old graduated from Camp G. and we got a new cousin camper. So again we had 3 boys. We started off with a Jigsaw Hunt. I cut pictures from magazines, glued them to card stock, (a different color for each boy), cut them into pieces and hid them in the yard. The boys had to find their color pieces and then put them together. We took trips to Gettysburg, watched how pretzels and potato chips were made, toured a coal mine, took a ride on a train and hiked in the woods. We played a Necktie Throw game (Family Fun Magazine) which was lots of fun. I got some old neckties at Goodwill, opened the inside seam of the wide end, put about 1/3 cup of sand in it and then glued it shut with a glue gun. To play, the boys had to swing the ties and get them in the hoola hoops we had placed in the yard. This turned out to be such fun, we played it again in the fall at a family get together. We also make bottle rockets (Family Fun Magazine) out of 2 liter bottles and PVC pipes. Then we went to an empty field where the boys were able to jump on their bottles and watch the rockets fly. We also made stink bug traps out of 2 liter bottles and LCD lights we got at the dollar store.
The pictures below tell the story. [click any photo to enlarge it] |
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| Camp Grandma is growing and thriving. I’ve written 2 stories for two different web sites. You can see them here: grandparents.about.com/ and, www.grandmasbriefs.com/grilled-grandmas/. How exciting to talk to and share events and experiences with grandmas from all over the country! We’ve been blessed! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Notes for you to consider: |
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Not having them sleep over has several advantages: (1) we have to clean up the house and sometimes the yard, and we have to get ready for the next day. (2) We also needed some quiet time and time for us to just wind down. I print a daily program (on our computer) which I give to each one every day at breakfast. They keep it with them and referred to it often. When they ask what an activity or craft is, we say they will have to wait and see. And when they ask about the next day, we tell them they will have to wait until then to find out. |
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 Planning ahead of time (up to 3 months or more) enables us to find "buy one, get one free" coupons at craft stores and some of the places we visit. Some of our activities cost money and we went out to eat several times–once for breakfast and once for lunch. If you are on a budget, these are not cheap things to do! |
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Several weeks after the camp I send the children a simple evaluation form to fill out with questions like: I liked best ... I want to do again ... My favorite thing ... I did not like ... and let’s not do this again. Their answers were almost unanimous. Their favorite things were climbing the rocks, going to the cave and making the bull whips and putting on the frozen t-shirts. There was nothing they didn’t like. Would we do it again? We already have ideas and a folder started for next year’s camp. June can’t get here too soon!!! See you at CAMP... |
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P.S. For Christmas, each child gets a photo album with all their pictures–approximately 100 pictures per child this year. Without exception, they sit and look at each picture and the rest of the gifts are forgotten! |  |
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| See the schedule. |
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2008 photos
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2007 Scrapbook of Memories
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Some of the activities this year included a trip to a coal mine, commercial dairy farm, and a shoe house. We made mocassins, a God's Eye, garden stones out of quick drying concrete, crystals with borax, t-shirts and painted a picture. We cooked our lunch outside with a some dry pieces of wood and cruised down the river on innertubes! And always end the week with Camp Olympics!
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2006 Scrapbook of Memories
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We had a busy week this year. We visited a coalmine, a newspaper, went on a train ride, walked around a lake to gather bugs, visited a horse farm, played goofy golf with croquet mallots, painted flat stones so they looked like animals, made pretzels and stained glass cookies and a fleece blanket in a pillow, went on a picnic lunch, had a hoola-hoop contest and a contest to see who could drink the juice out of a baby bottle the fastest! What fun that was!
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~Liberty~ |
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With a little searching you can find many places to go that don’t cost money. Eating at home or packing lunches definitely is cheaper. I asked one of our daughters to pack the picnic lunches. That certainly was a much better lunch than I would have packed!! We cooked one lunch outside on a fire that the boys helped make. We fried eggs on foil, roasted hotdogs, marshmallows and bread on a stick. This is a favorite activity that we do every year.
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