Mini Camp

My dear friend Carrie is amazing.  She does so much and right now she is quite pregnant and still doing it all.  One of the things she has done and is doing this summer is "mini camp."  Now it's cousin camp, but when she lived here it was friend camp.  Each week Carrie with another family picked a theme then rotated weeks who did the mini camp in the afternoon.  They would also take a field trip during the week related to the theme.  I decided to try it with some friends in our neighborhood.  We all have kids around the same age.  Last week was my turn and I chose the theme Pioneer Day.  I thought with Pioneer Day in Utah being July 24th that it would be an appropriate theme.  There were so many things I could have done.  It was very hard to narrow down the activities I wanted to do.  I found some children's pioneer stories at the library which we attempted to read.  Unfortunately making butter distracted them.  We put cream in jars and had the kids shake them to make butter.  I had the kids shaking the jars during the story.  I remember doing this in girl scouts and it worked, but for some reason it didn't work for pioneer mini camp.  Neither did the ice cream in a bag we tried to make.  I think the horrid heat we've been having might be part of the problem.

The ice cream bags were leaking so they had to be shaken outside.

This was the best activity.  We made candy covered wagons.  Thanks Shelley for the idea.  It was delicious.  So of the kids actually made covered wagons while other enjoyed eating the materials.

Seth's, well...his turned into the alien space wagon from some other planet.

Mason was a fan of the frosting.

This is the pimped out wagon.