Last year the kids and I ran our own art camp for a week in the summer. The two summers before that Tucker had attended an art camp, but the one that was close by hadn’t impressed me a lot. I figured I could make a really cool art camp for the cost of sending him to one, it could include Molly too, and we wouldn’t have to do all the schlepping to/from camp.
Art camp was a great success—we made drip art with crayons, suncatchers out of melted beads, fairy houses, life-sized dolls and lots of other things I’ve forgotten by now. It was a summer highlight for sure.
This year, Tucker requested that we do history camp instead, which has also been fabulous.
We’ve been reading the Little House on the Prairie series to the kids (On #5 right now – The Long Winter) so a lot of our activities relate to that.
We’ve:
-made a button lamp (make a wick out of fabric that’s tied with a string, wrapped around a coin/button, dipped in oil and seated in a bowl of oil)
-churned butter (I was surprised how well this turned out)
-made beanbags for a pioneer bean bag game
-made rag rugs
-cooked over the fire
-practiced our carving skills with soap
-made a miniature log cabin out of sticks (that is now living next to Molly’s dollhouse)
-washed clothes on a washboard and line dried them (Tucker was surprisingly good at washing clothes, but neither kid could wring them out)
-made pulled molasses candy (Tucker liked it, Molly didn’t)
-checked out the TV series “Liberty’s Kids” out of the library (the characters go back in time to different historical events)
-visited Fort Ticonderoga in New York (when we were visiting my mom)
-visited Shelburne Museum in Vermont
Fun!
