This Camp Mommy was a little bit more excessive than the last ones that I have done. I figured doing one, which was a bit over the top in regards to monetary preparation wouldn't hurt and it ended up being lots of fun. I'm actually planning on making this a yearly summer event, hopefully getting more kids involved next year. It will be fun to see Bug and his buddies go through all the carnival games when they are a little bit older. Regardless, this was a blast.
I still like to add a little bit of learning into our weekly activities; so how I did this was by incorporating a money and number theme. I made some fake money...by printing a Canadian 5 dollar bill and cutting it out. I wanted it to look like our currency so the kids were actually learning with our country's money. I promise, I did not invite some kids over, making them pay for tickets! haha. I also had some fake loonie coins. So for $6.00, the boys got 10 tickets. Then I randomly chose how many tickets each station would "cost" them. In the end, there were 7 stations, with a total of 20 tickets needed. I wanted the kiddies to have to go back to buy more tickets when they ran out; just to help their learning by repetition.
The 7 stations were as followed:
face painting,
search and rescue treasure (dollar store items hidden in a water play table, filled with foam blocks),
fishing for treasure (tied string around my fence to a tree and hung a sheet over it),
ring toss (a dinosaur set I bought from Chapters this year but a cheaper homemade version can be found on the internet with a dowel and bracelet glow sticks),
ball toss (stacked paper cups from Dollarama),
a spoon and egg run (set from
Melissa and Doug that I purchased this past Easter - totally worth the money so you aren't actually breaking real eggs) and of course a
potato sack race (you can buy sack sets at party stores, but I purchased pillowcases from Dollarama to cut on cost).
Once the kids purchased some tickets, we went to each station. I would tell them how many tickets it would cost them, and then got them to count out the tickets to give me. This would hopefully help with number recognition and counting. All of the activities were pretty enjoyable, some a little more than others. They loved the ball toss, ring toss and of course the big loot ones which were the fishing and searching amongst the foam blocks station. The Egg Run was a bit too much for them. Bug was sad every time his dropped. But I'm sure next year, it will be fun.
The potato sack one was probably the funniest out of the 7 stations. Bug got the hang of it right away, but his two buddies thought they had to run rather than hop. It was corrected quite quickly but not before I got a
small clip on my phone. The boys were super cute, hopping from one end of the yard to the other.
The potato sack race was our last station, and once that was completed, the boys got their final treat. A container of cotton candy (from Bulk Barn). Each station, there was a small prize they left with. The search and rescue station, as well as the fishing station each had a bag of small goodies (again, most items were bought from Dollarama or Party City and they were $1.00 or less - toy cars, whistles [yay!], notepad, pencil, etc). Bug liked many of the items, but he couldn't wait to open the cotton candy...he just shoved his mouth right into the container once the lid was open.
After all the fun was had with the stations, the boys played with the goodies. We BBQ'd some hotdogs, to continue with the carnival theme and then we let the boys paint our faces. I love my son THAT much! My one friend, who's the mom of one of Bug's buddies was tag teamed by two boys. At the end of it, we were deciding if we should take make up advice from our 4 year olds!
All in all, this was a fun day. One that will resurface in the future. As a side note, while we shopped for all the items, Bug couldn't help but tell everyone he came into contact with (other customers, the cashiers, etc) that these were for Camp Mommy. They had no idea what he was talking about, but it warms my heart that he talks about these days like everyone should have them and know what they are!
Word Document Link for Post
No comments:
Post a Comment