2013 Family Activity

As you all know, it is now late January and we have kicked off the year 2013! I realize that I didn't do a whole lot of posting in 2012, but this year I will try to post more often. Anyways, a fun family activity to do in January, as it is the beginning of the year, is to decorate a cardboard box (like a shoe box) with fun stickers and doodles and anyhting else you can think of. Be sure to include the curent year somewhere on there. Over the course of the year, fill it with mementos of your family memories in the year. On new years or new years eve next year, open it up and go through it together. It's always fun to remember all of the good times you had!

Enjoy!

Pressing Leaves

After a veeeeeerrry long gap, which I apologize for, it is almost Thanksgiving. It's that time of fall where all the leaves have pretty much fallen from the trees and are crisp, crunchy layer coating the ground in an array of warm colors. There's orange, red, yellow, and every color in between. Take an adventure into your yard with your little ones and each of you select a leaf or two (make sure it's a full leaf) and bring the leaves back into the house.

1. Get a tissue and a  couple pages of newspaper
2. place the leaves on one page and put the other page on top
3. place a heavy book on the top
4. After 24 hours take the leaves out
5. Iron them onto a piece of wax paper
6. let them cool 
7. Cut out each leaf do something creative

• Back it with construction paper and hang it on the wall
• Glue it to a card and give/mail it to a friend or loved one
• Place each one on a different wall in your home
• or anything else you can think of

Enjoy! Happy Fall and Thanksgiving!

Time, time, precious time

Okay so again I struggled to find a time for day camp that works for everyone. Therefore, I haven't had day camp for nearly two months! Next week I will try as hard as I possibly can to make it work out. I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for your patience. Here's an idea you can use until I have day camp again. Make a list of things you can find in your outdoor environment, like things in your yard, neighborhood, or any other outdoor area. Give the kids a copy of the list and have them search for every item until they've found all of them. You can also turn it into a competition by giving each kid a copy of the list and have the kids race against each other to see who can find all the items first.

Item Ideas

• big pinecone 
• piece of gravel
• maple tree leaf
• twig
• log
• chunk of moss
• mushroom
• unique flower
• big rock
• worm
• frog
• etc

* If you do have living organisms, such as fungi, animals, or plants, make sure to leave fungi alone, release animals back into their habitat, and leave living plants in their place. This is just so we can protect the environment. 


If you want to try another version of the scavenger hunt, you can hide things (cones, buckets, shovels, toys, etc) around your yard and have the kids find those instead.  

Enjoy!

Lack of posts :(

I apologize to everyone for my lack of posts over the past month or so. I got really busy and just didn't have much time to host day camp or come up with activities. But don't worry. I plan to start day camp up again tomorrow or if that ends up not working out, then sometime next week. This means I'll have new ideas for you all really soon :) Thank you for reading and keep checking back for some fun, new activities!

FIRST DAY CAMP OF 2012!!!!!

After a school year full of hard work and learning for everyone, I was ready to start Camp Kt back-up again ASAP and I'm sure the kids were just as ready for fun activities as I was! Therefore, last Friday at 10:30 AM I was ready to go with a fully planned out 2 and a half hour day camp! Friday's participants were as follows...

• My siblings: Abby, Sam, and Jordan
• 3 out of 4 of my cousins: Keegan, Delaney, and Maddie 
• And last but not least... Delaney's friend Jessie

The top three favorite activities of the day were as follows...

Art: Summer Activity Collage
What you need: Crayons or colored pencils and printer paper
What to do: fill the entire printer paper with a bunch of small pictures of summer activities (it doesn't need to be one big picture where everything flows together it should be a bunch mini sections of different drawings.)

Sports Game: World Cup/World Poacher
What you need: a couple of soccer balls, a soccer goal, which can just be a boundary marked off by cones or coats or whatever you have, and at least 3 kids for world poacher and at least 6 for world cup, although it's way more fun with more
What to do: Toss a soccer ball or two (depending on the amount of kids) out into the playing space and the kids have to try to get the ball and score. When you score step off to the side and wait for the next round. The last team/individual to score is out of the cup. In the final round (when there are two teams/individuals left in the cup) the first team to score wins!

Camp Activity: Six Flags
what you need: 12 cones or other objects
What to do: divide the playing space in half and divide the number of kids in half to create two teams. Create an end zone at the back end of each half and place six cones/other objects in each end zone. The object of the game is to get all 12 cones/other objects into your end zone at once. You do this by running into the other team's end zone and taking one cone at a time back to your end zone. Defend the cones in your end zone by tagging the players that run to your side to get them into jail. Once a player is in your end zone, you can't tag them until they come back out. Once a player is in jail, they can't get out until a teammate comes and tags them out (one person at a time).


I encourage all of you to try these activities with your kids because I'm sure they will enjoy them! Feel free to comment on your opinion of these activities. More activities coming soon!

Summer: So Close...yet so far

Summer is here! Although, it did seem like school dragged on forever... at least it seemed that way to me. I got out last Friday...Thank Goodness! But the last few weeks of school went by so slowly. Teachers were trying to cram every last bit of information into our heads before they released us to freedom! The suspense of summer made all the work seem a lot harder because everyone was ready to be done before our brains could explode! But, the work load slowed to a stop, life is got easier, and summer vacation finally arrived. I don't know if any of your kids feel all this stress or exhaustion, particularly the older ones, but if so I would recommend for them to keep working hard so all the work ends faster and the teachers ease up. My family and I left for Sunriver Resort in Oregon on Saturday and came home today. It was a great vacation! there were all kinds activities, such as hiking, biking, swimming, etc. One particularly cool thing we did was hike through a massive lava cave that was really deep underground. It was formed by a lava flow 100,000 years ago when Newberry Volcano erupted. Another really fun adventure was mountain biking down a volcano while stopping at many spots along the Paulina River. The water was freezing cold!!! But, it was still awesome because we got to swim, jump in, get carried out from under a waterfall by the current, and sliding down rocks with the current into deeper water! The weather there was nice throughout our entire stay :) I highly recommend Sunriver Resort as a place to go! I will be starting Camp Kt back up again really soon so keep checking back for new posts with Camp Kt activity reports.

Spring is in Bloom

Well, it's April. There's rain, there's sun, there's strong winds, and refreshing breezes that whistle and whoosh through the tree branches. Trees and flowers are in full bloom. Beautiful white and pink blossoms are sprouting on the trees and flowers are popping up every which way. Everything from hand planted plants to weeds seem to be everywhere you look, in the grass, in the dirt, in the house, in the forest, etc. Speaking of flowers here's a fun flowery craft to do with your little ones...

Tissue Paper Flowers

Things You'll Need:

• Tissue paper in a variety of colors
• A miniature flower pot per participant
• Crayola Washable Paint 
• Possibly paintbrushes 
• Green pipe cleaners

What to do: 

1. Use the Crayola Washable Paint to paint the kids' hands or fingers
2. The kids then can put hand prints and finger prints all over the outside of their pot
3. Make sure to throughly wash the hands before touching or continuing the project
4. You can also just paint the pots one solid color with paint brushes if you don't want to use the hand and finger print method. (strips, polka-dots, etc work too).
5. Let the paint dry completely 
6. Meanwhile, have the kids choose a few different colors of tissue paper
7. Have them take a couple pieces of one or more colors and hold all the pieces together at the bottom
8. Twist them together to form a swirly flower shape
9. Take a green pipe cleaner and wrap and tie it around the center of the swirl to create a stem for the flower
10. Repeat a few times
11. Twist all the stems together at the bottom 
12. Put the whole thing into the pot when the pot has dried entirely
13. Place the pots on a windowsill for a decoration

This would be a good May Day project or Mother's Day Gift!

Easter

Spring is upon us and Easter is arriving in a little over a week... we must prepare :) Here's some fun Easter decorating projects that you probably already know but anyway here it goes....

1. Egg dying (one of my favorites)

1. Hard boil some eggs
2. Get a bunch of different colors of food coloring out and get a bowl for each color
3. Fill each bowl with about 2/3 cup of hot water and 2tbs of vinegar
4. Add one color of food coloring to each bowl
5. place a hard boiled egg on a spoon and dip the egg to a color of your choice
6. Keep the egg in there until it has a good amount of color to it
7. You can do half of the egg one color and half of it another color by dipping half the egg in one color and the other half in another color. 

2. Easter Egg strings (this one is especially for kids who love to color)

1. Either draw some Easter eggs for your kids to color in or print out uncolored Easter egg coloring pages off the internet
2. Use Crayola Washable Markers, crayons, or colored pencils and color them in with your kids
3. You can do designs ad different colors
4. The do a single hole punch in the top of each Easter egg 
5. Take a piece of string and thread it through each hole
6. Then, you can hang it in a doorway or over a window

3. Chocolate Hunt (fun on a rainy day)

1. get a pack or two of Hershey's mini chocolate eggs
2. hide them in corners and little nooks and cranny's in the house, such a drawers, staircases, corners, shelves, chairs, etc
3. Let the kids go hunt for them
4. At the end see who collected the most to add a little competition to it
5. The eat away!

Enjoy!

The Hunger Games

First of all I apologize for not posting anything for a few months, I've been pretty busy. I recently developed an addiction to a book series called The Hunger Games. The series consists of three chapter books that are all somewhere around 400 pages...

1. The Hunger Games
2. Catching Fire
3. Mockingjay

These books are made for middle school aged students all the way through adults. So I realize this isn't much of a kid activity but I wanted to create a post about it so those of you who haven't been introduced to them yet can find out about them. Some or a lot of you may have already heard of or read them but if you haven't read them you should. I was so addicted to the second one, which is 391 pages, that I finished it in 2 days! On March 23 a movie of the first book came to theaters and tickets for the midnight premier sold fast, luckily I was fortunate enough to get some. Here's a brief description of what they're about... Way in the future the only civilization that exists in the World is a country that covers most of North America, called Panem. Panem was originally divided into 13 districts. But, the districts rebelled against the Capitol of Panem and District 13 was eliminated, so then there were only 12. To punish the districts for the rebellion the Capitol creates the Hunger Games. Each year one boy and one girl from each district between the ages of 12 and 18 are randomly selected as tributes to go into the Hunger Games. The tributes train and prepare for the arena, which can be anything in the wilderness. In the Hunger Games the tributes have to survive on their own and fight to the death. All the tributes have to kill each other off until there is only one remaining, this tribute is the victor. The tributes can do whatever they want to fight and survive, for there are only two rules: You can not eat the other tributes and you must remain  on your metal plate for sixty seconds before the gong sounds for the beginning of the hunger games. The main character in these books is a girl named Katniss Everdeen. So there's your backstory on the Hunger Games Book. It's a good science fiction story full of action and there's a secondary story line that has a love triangle in it.

"Winning means fame and fortune, losing means certain death, the hunger games have begun."

Enjoy and "May the odds be ever in your favor"

More Christmas Ideas

Here are a few more fun Christmas activities to enjoy with your kids. We didn't get to these at day camp but they are still just as fun.
Gingerbread Door Hanger:
Materials:

• Safety Scissors
• Brown Construction paper
• gingerbread stencils (optional)
• Pencils
• Washable Crayola Markers
• Red, Green, Brown, or White yarn or string
• A single hole puncher

Instructions:

1. Either draw or trace a few gingerbread people onto brown construction paper.
2. Cut out the gingerbread people
3. Hole punch to top of each gingerbread person
4. Use markers to decorate the people with faces and other accessories 
5. Weave the string or yarn in and out of the hole punches, connecting the people
6. Tie off the string at the ends
7. Hang it over a doorway or window

Christmas Guess Who:

Materials: 

• Index cards of strips of paper
• Tape
• something to write with

Instructions:

1. Come up with Christmas themed names and/or objects. Santa Clause, ornament, Rudolph, snow, north pole, etc.
2. Write each idea on a separate index card or strip of paper.
3. Without showing the players the cards, tape a card to each player's back with the side with the writing facing out.
4. Each player has to figure out what name or object is on their back by asking the other players, who know what the card says, yes or no questions about it... Is it a person? Is it a boy? Is it a girl? Does it live at the north pole? etc.
5. The first person to guess their's right wins. 

For extra Christmas spirit play Christmas music in the background while enjoying these activities and the other activities described in my previous post about Christmas Day Camp! 

Have A Very Merry Christmas Everyone!

Christmas Day Camp

The other day I did a Christmas day camp for the kids. We played games and did a lot of crafts. The first craft we did was given to me by Keegan, Delaney, and Cam's mom, Ashley. Thank you Ashley for your help.
Gnome Santas:
Materials:

• small, cylinder pieces of wood from a tree, branch, log, etc.
• Red, Black, White, and Green Crayola Cloud Clay.
• small googly eyes
• Tooth picks

Instructions:

1. Take the small, cylinder pieces of wood and shave of the top so that the top slants upward.
2. Choose either red or green Crayola Cloud Clay for your Santa.
3. Take off a chunk of clay and place the wood in the center closer to the bottom
4. Start the wrapping process by covering the bottom of the wood (the NOT slanted side) by folding the up the clay on the bottom onto the wood
5. Then work your way up wrapping the clay on both sides (do not fold over on the face, which is the slanted part)
6. When you get to the top fold the excess clay on the top over.
7. Take a strip of white and roll it.
8. wrap it around the face on the edge of the other clay.
9. Take some more white.
10. Mold it into a beard type shape lay it down about 1/4 way up the face.
11. Take a tooth pick and make small incisions on the beard to make it look like hair.
12. Then, with the tooth pick, cut out a mouth shape in the beard almost to the top of the beard. (this creates a mouth and a mustache)
13. Take a tiny red ball of red Crayola Cloud Clay and stick it at the top of the mustache, for a nose.
14. Either stick two small googly eyes on the face for eyes of take 2 small flat pieces of white clay and two even smaller pieces of black clay and make eyes.
15. Let them air dry

Paper Bag Reindeer Puppet:
Materials:

• Brown paper lunch sacks
•  small colored cotton balls
• Big googly eyes
• red and black washable markers
• Brown Construction Paper

Instructions:

1. Take the child's hands and trace them onto the brown construction paper
2. Cut them out
3. Have the open side of the lunch sack facing down (flap on the top)
4. Glue the handprints onto the side of the bag without the flap with the thumbs facing out in opposite directions. (these are the antlers)
5. The flap is the face so glue the googly eyes on the top of the flap and the cotton ball in the middle of the flap. 
6. If you want a moth either use a red or black marker and draw a mouth underneath the flap.
7. Now you have a puppet, stick your hand into the bag and make the flap move up and down.
8. Name it after your favorite reindeer, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, or Rudolph. 

Bruce The Spruce (the talking Christmas tree at the Warm Beach Lights of Christmas)
Materials:

• green, red, and yellow construction paper
• colored markers or small colored cotton balls.
• Safety scissors
• Pencils
• Big googly eyes

Instructions:

1. draw and cut out a fairly big Christmas tree on green construction paper.
2. Cut out a smile mouth shape on red construction paper and glue it closer to the bottom
3. Glue the googly eyes closer to the top. 
4. Draw on ornaments with Crayola Washable Markers or glue on small colored cotton balls
5. Cut out a star on yellow construction paper and glue it on the top of the tree.
6. Merry Christmas Bruce!

The last thing we did was play a game called Santa Says. It's just like Simon Says but except for saying Simon Says... you say Santa Says... and you wear a Santa hat if you have one. I got this idea from http://holidays.kaboose.com/xmas-party.html
Happy Holidays!

Thanksgiving

Gobble! Gobble! Gobble! It's time for some Thanksgiving fun. Here are some fun craft ideas....

The Classic Turkey Hand (I know you all have done this one at one point but let me remind you anyway)

1. Trace your hand onto a piece 
2. Color it in so that your thumb is the head and your pinkie, index, pointer, and middle finger are the feathers the rest of the hand should be brown.
3. Don't forget to add the red stuff on the chin of you're turkey (Not sure what it's called). 
4. Color a fall background. Sun, clouds, falling leaves, grass, football, etc.

Leaf strings:

1. draw, cut, and trace leaves onto colored construction paper, red, orange,yellow
2. Punch one hole into the top of each leaf 
3. Cut some string and thread it through all the leaves, tie at both ends
4. Hang it in a doorway or over a large window

Customized Football: 

1. What would you're dream football look like? Pink with sparkles, neon rainbow, feathered, polka dotted, plaid, striped, or just regular. 
2. Draw a football on a piece of paper 
3. use all sorts of craft supplies, such as cotton balls, sparkles, feathers, Crayola Washable Markers, Crayola Crayons, Crayola colored pencils, etc. to customize your football. 

Enjoy!

Costumes

Time to hurry up and find a cool costume for Halloween. Be scary, be silly, be crazy! In my lifetime I'v been a clown, a lion, an Incredible, a doctor, an ocean (best costume in my kindergarten class!), an eighties person, Hermione Granger (Harry Potter), a hippie, a black cat, a duck. This year I'm being a Native American (kinda like Disney's Pocahontas). Abby is being a hippie, Sam is being a Husky Fan, Jordan is being a witch, Delaney is being a genie, Cam is an army man, Keegs doesn't know. 

Pumpkins

The classic Halloween time activity is go to the pumpkin patch with your family, get pumpkins, and then carve them right? Well, last October we did something a little different we went to the pumpkin patch and got our "perfect" pumpkins, but instead of getting out the old carving knife we got out the paint brushes and the (washable) Crayola paint and painted our pumpkins. How crazy are we right? So I guess the point of this is to give you something different to try. This year we're going back to carving but who knows maybe we'll try painting again next year.
Ideas for pumpkin faces: cyclops, buck teeth, one tooth, princess (with crown), smile face, scowl (frown), or the classical triangular eyes and nose with a mouth with a bunch of teeth missing.
Enjoy!

Halloween Decorationg

Use your classic Halloween decorations and make them even more spooky. Here's a fun craft that you can do with your kids and uses your decorations.

What we did:

1. Set up an R.I.P tombstone, a potion pot, and a skull on a table. (don't uses a table that you would typically eat on.
2. Cut green and white construction paper into long strips.
3. Folded them back and forth to make them wavy. (fold a small section of the strip over one way and then the other way. Continue until there isn't anymore space to fold.)
4. Put the green paper (potion) into the potion pot (fill it up)
5. Spread the white (fog) around the whole "scene" on the table
6. Now you have a graveyard

Ideas of decorations you could use skull, potion pot, skeleton, tombstone, witch, mummy, zombie, pumpkin, etc.     

Fall

Fall is upon us. I'm afraid the warm summer air is gone and the cool crisp air has returned. Time to get out your jackets and sweatshirts. As much as we all miss summer we have to think positive about fall. You can jump into large leaf piles, rake leaves, watch football, and do plenty of crafts. If you are in need of a craft I've got some up my sleeve. Some of you may no this one but let me remind you anyway.

Leaf Tracings

• Take you're kids out and gather some leaves (make sure they're dry
• Bring them back 
• Get out some printer paper and some pencils
• Grab a leaf
• Make sure it's pretty flat
• Hold it on the paper with one hand
• with the other trace it with a pencil
• continue this until the page is full but make the leaves over lap 
• Once you're done shave the wrapping off of a red, orange, and yellow Crayola crayon
• Then shade the paper with the crayons (use all the colors throughout the page)
• Once your entire page is colored, lightly go over the colors with yellow, orange, and red Crayola Washable paint.
• Let it dry and then back it with fall colored construction paper and hang it on the wall.

If you've got questions or comments post a comment about it on this post then keep checking for an answer. I'll try and answer A.S.A.P.

Enjoy!

After School Snack

Enjoy this healthy and delicious snack with your kids when they come home from school.

What I use: Jiff Creamy Peanut Butter, Tillamook Vanilla Yogurt, and apples.

What to do: mix the Jiff Creamy Peanut Butter and the Tillamook Vanilla Yogurt together. Then, slice the apples and put them on a plate. Set out the apples and the bowl of Jiff Creamy Peanut Butter and Tillamook Vanilla Yogurt.

How to enjoy: Dip apple slices in the Jiff Creamy Peanut Butter and the Tillamook Vanilla Yogurt and eat it. mmmmmmmmm!

Organize

When your kids come home from school with report cards and art projects, are you always looking for a place to put them? Well here's an organized idea to keep you on top of things. Get a binder for each of your kids and put dividers or folders in it. Then organize it. Maybe put art projects in one divider or folder, assignments and report cards in another, and class photos in another. And if you're looking to be extra crafty you can decorate the outside with stickers, ribbons, and their name. Have a GREAT school year!

Back to School

My cousins and I have to go back to school on Wednesday (August 31)! I am not quite ready to get back into my normal routine of waking up early, working hard at school, and then coming home and doing homework. Unfortunately, this also means that Camp Kt has ended for Summer 2011. :( However, I will still be posting ideas and activities on here as much as possible (which might not be that often). Hope Everyone had an AWESOME SUMMER!