August 15th 2015 - Day Camp

August 15th 2015 - Day camp

Today was the day of Badger Day Camp.  I've added the link to the whole board not just 1 pin as this has most of the ideas that helped me to organise and run the day camp.

Although we only had 3 out of 5 children turn up they all had lots of fun and were very tired at the end of a long and packed day of activities.

The above photo collage show our set up and the camping lanterns the kids made. 

We had 1 room set up as a campsite, with tents, Christmas trees, bears, bean bags as seats round the "fake" campfire and a small kitchen area with snacks and drinks.  We had another room for crafts, games and activities.  Some of the activities were done around the campfire.

During the day the Badgers made their own id badges, camp t-shirts, a noughts & crosses game from sticks and stones, they made camping lanterns from tubs, battery tea-lights and tissue paper flames and they made their own stick photo frame which a photo of them at the "camp site" was added to.  They covered many things in short subjects including camp fires and how to get help and where they should go, maps and compasses, things they can  and can't eat in the wild, the importance of hand washing especially outdoors and we used the units UV gel kit - they did really well at it.  They also talked about things you can find in nature - animals, birds, plants etc and did an A-Z of them, after this we went on a short walk to the church gardens where we looked for items that we had talked about and they had a spectrum colour chart and needed to find things in nature for each colour.

After tea the Badgers and some of the adults got into their pj's, brought their blankets and torches and lanterns to the campfire where we had a camping story and sang some campfire songs, they then got into their sleeping bags to await the arrival of parents to collect them.

Each Badger was given a certificate for handwashing, a certificate of attendance and 2 old SJA Badger badges for hobbies and games.  They will all be receiving their Adventure badge and certificate at our next presentation evening.  It was a great day the Badgers were well behaved and all had fun, but it couldn't have happened without the help of the adults from the unit as well.

august 5th 2015 - making smores

august 5th 2015 - making smores

.....but not the kind you can eat!  The smores I am making are for a smore making race for day camp.  The idea is meant to be done in teams but as I only have a few coming to day camp they can do it individually.

I had to go shopping for pillows to make them:

I then cut the pillows in half and then into quarters, as these seemed to be a good size to be the marshmallows for the middle of the smores.  I stitched up the open sides:

I have 4 marshmallows like this:

 

Whilst I was making the marshmallows I had my son cutting squares of cardboard to use as the biscuits/crackers, they are a nice brown on both sides and dont need painting:

 

I also got him to cut out some thin cardboard cereal boxes and backed the shiny sides together, these will be the chocolate of the smore once painted dark brown.

The way the race will work is each player has 2 crackers, pieces of chocolate and a marshmallow.  These are placed the opposite end of the room to players.  On go they need to run to their pile and pick up a cracker and run back to the start, place cracker on floor and then go get a chocolate and place on top of cracker, then go get their marshmallow and place on chocolate, get the next chocolate to go on top of marshmallow and lastly the cracker on top.  IF any of it falls down before you get the next piece on it, you must put the new piece back, rebuild your smore and then go get the next piece.  the first person wins.

June 30th 2015 - Making an Indoor campfire

June 30th 2015 - Making an Indoor campfire

We are hoping to run a day camp during the summer holidays for St John Ambulance, but as it will be in a building we can't have a real fire.  So whilst I was looking for camp ideas over the past few weeks I found this very basic indoor campfire.  Although it would work I set about how I could make a better one.

I knew I had brown curtains (think 1970's and your on the right lines) in the airing cupboard that had previously been used on the doors (they are now nice teal colour that matches walls).  So I went and got 1 and started cutting rectangles (as you do) without a template or plan or exactly what I was doing.  I then stitched them as tubes and at 1 end, stuffed them with an old pillow and made logs and twigs.  And I came up with these:

 They will make the twigs and logs for my campfire.

I had some red organza in  my material box left over from last years pirate party and thought I could use i as part of the flames, but would need yellow and orange as well - I ordered some chair ribbons like you have at weddings in 2 shades of orange and a bright yellow.  I was now ready to make my flames!  The next pic shows the oranges and yellow but not red:

The chair ribbons were a nice width to use as flames and the bonus was the edges had been hemmed so they were less likely to fray.  I cut across the organza in about 2.5-3" pieces, 1 of each of the 4 colours:

I stitched them together with the red at bottom, dark orange next, light orange and then yellow at top and cut the yellow to look like flames.  See pic below:

Once they were stitched together and the flame shape cut I started to add thin wire to them so that the flames would stay upright rather than just fall over.  I stitched the bottom of the red to the thinner of the logs/twigs I had made - 2 per log 1 each side.  All of the flames are different as they haven't been measured i've just cut and stitched and the same with the yellow flame shapes i've just cut.  But I think this adds to the effect.  Here is 1 log with flames on it:

I've not quite finished it all, but I think it looks really good and i'm pleased with how its turned out.  I have fake t-light candles (battery operated) that are an orange colour and flicker, i'm looking for some white flickering ones as well and these are all going amongst the logs so it looks like the fire is flickering.