I’m so excited to share a recap of our first local summer Kids Craft Camp with you! Starting with our first day/unit – CAMPING!

We had seven of our nine campers arrive on our first day, suite up in their make-a-face aprons and get right to work getting messy and creative.

To start things off I thought it would be fun to do a summer Camping Unit so the kids made paper popsicle stick campgrounds (found in our online Kids Craft Camp) and painted little peg people to go inside the tents.

  

To paint the peg people (which were just cut down from thick wooden dowels – the DIY for which is also found in My book Playful under the Playful Village project) the kids taped off the top face portion and then painted the lower portion the color they wanted for the clothing – adding patterns – such as polka dots – if they wished. When that had dried they took the tape off of the top and proceeded to paint the hair and face, etc.

It was so fun seeing the little campers get creative with painting their tents and characters.

To keep the kids interest for the full three hours of craft camp (which ran from 10-1) we were sure to take breaks. We had a popcorn break at 11:00 where we put popcorn in the middle of our Let’s Playground mat. The kids loved it! (big thanks to my friend Barbara of Art Bar Blog who recommended this and who also helped me with ideas for camp scheduling, etc. She runs such inspiring camps that you should definitely check out!). We then took a lunch break at 12 pm where they kids ate their sack lunches brought from home.

I also set up creative play areas for the kids to tinker around at if they were done with certain portions of their projects early or if they just needed a bit of a break. I brought lots of handmade toys from my book Playful and it was fun seeing the kids interact and enjoy them.

After their tents and campers were complete, we went on a mini nature hunt outside looking for dirt, rocks, grass and twigs to add to the campground dioramas.

Some kids went all out with lakes and fish complete with little fishing poles for their campers! It was the best.

The kids also sewed Kids Craft Camp sashes on the first day to hold each of their unit badges. I had them precut and helped them to all sew a straight line for the top and bottom of their badges. We made them just like we did for our GAP kids crafting summer a few years back (full DIY on those here).