Is anyone else shocked at how fast this summer is flying by? It seems like the last day of school was just yesterday.  One of our favorite activities this summer has been doing Camp Whamma Jamma with some of our friends.  The mom had asked me if we wanted to participate in a mom-run home summer camp and I couldn’t say yes fast enough!  We picked a couple days in the month of July and took turns hosting a themed camp.

I had the first session and did a camping theme. So fun and easy to pull together!

The first camping activity was decorating sit upons!  Originally, I was going to have them make the sit upons themselves, but I had so many other activities we weren’t going to have enough time so I put them together the night before.  I cut a large repositionable contact paper rectangle for each kid and filled them with crumpled magazine pages.  Then before I sealed them I stuck a short ribbon into the open side for a handle.  The kids then personalized their sit upons with crayons and stickers.

  Then it was time for some stories.  We read Maisy Goes Camping by Lucy Cousins and When We Go Camping by Margriet Ruurs.  The kids especially loved When We Go Camping, the illustrations are amazing and each page contains a footprint for the reader to identify.  We highly recommend it!

Next up was a “hike” in the backyard!  We gathered lots of fun things like rocks and leaves.  Everyone got to pick a special rock to turn into a pet.

And then made crayon rubbings of some of the leaves they found!

For a snack we had trail mix and s’mores! Since our campfire was made out of tissue paper, I roasted the marshmallows for everyone on the gas stove.  You can’t go camping, even pretend camping, without roasting marshmallows!

After a snack we went outside for archery practice! I found the coolest tutorial on I Can Teach My Child for making mini bows and arrows.  You have to check it out!  We had so much fun with them–once we figured out which way to hold the bow!

After archery the kids had free play time and enjoyed trying out the cardboard tent and campfire until they got too hot and headed inside to cool off.  After a little bit of unstructured time we gathered back together for another story and craft.  We read Eric Carle’s The Very Lonely Firefly and talked about what would happen if you were to catch a firefly in a jar.

Then we made our own inspired by the ones from Come Together Kids.  We followed Laura’s directions for glow in the dark firefly jars except we used our fingers to make the bugs instead of a paintbrush.  Then we tried them out!  The kids went into a dark room with their glowing jars and “caught” glowing bugs (purchased from the dollar section at Target) that I had hid all over the room.

After a busy morning the kids were ready to take their bag lunches and their sit upons out to the campfire for lunch!  Definitely a fun (and sunny) camping filled day!  What fun camping activities have you tried?  We’d love some more ideas!

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