Fairy Camp

This past weekend we spent the weekend at the beautiful Camp Wa-Thik-Ane in Morin-Heights, Quebec. We got a beautiful day for lots of fun activities on Saturday with a small group of Sparks, Brownies and Guides. We did crafts, team building games and lots of outdoor activities that let the girls be creative and explore their surroundings.

We took all of our activities from the BC CAMP IN A BOX - FAIRIES & FRIENDS. We took those activities and plugged them into our own schedule. As well we added some activities and modified some to get the girls more involved. We also added a list of challenges which one of our Guides created to keep the girls busy during down time or for when they were finished their duties.

We went on the Fairy Trail Hike at our camp ground as well. This trail was put in by a group at the campground and the Sparks and Brownies really love it. IT includes things such as fairy houses and poems.

We also ordered our crests from the BC COUNCIL as they were so cute and the leaders thought they would be nice for the girls to have to go with this camp. You can fill in the form for those on the BC website and e-mail your order to them it was very simple to do :)

Here is our booklet and our version of this amazing camp resource:

Fairy Camp Booklet

Below are some of the pictures from our weekend

As always I'd love to hear what you ladies have done for Fairy camps or if any of these resources have helped you in planning your camps.

DISCLAIMER: I do not claim to have created any of these activities as explained we took everything from the BC CAMP IN A BOX with only a few modifications. You can head over to their website to find all the amazing activities they have for this camp.

Keeping Things Organized

One of the biggest issues at camp is keeping things AND leaders organized. Not just in terms of what we need for each activity, schedule and meals to name a few but also who is running what and when do they have to be there.

Using the booklets helps our units immensely in keeping us all organized but one of the other things we use is a PROGRAM WORKSHEET. It basically outlines who, what, when, how and what you need. Below is an example of this sheet filled in for our upcoming camp;

Example

Yes, this takes a little more time initially but in the long run it saves us a ton of headaches! We post it up in the leader room or main hall of where we are having our camp so that each leader has access to it. As well it is sent out ahead of time so leaders know ahead of time where they need to be.

Want to try it out? I'm all about sharing so here is a nice clean, blank copy for you!! Let me know how it works out for you and your group of leaders


Program Worksheet Template

Wizard of OZ Camp

Last January (yes it has taken me awhile!) we had a residential camp with girls from Sparks through Rangers. The theme of Wizard of OZ was picked and voted for by the girls. The leaders went from there and had a ton of fun planning this one. There really is so much to work with from that movie! We used each of the characters as inspiration for our activities; parents helped us collect tin cans before hand to make our very own Tin Men (yes we used hammers and nails too!), Glinda was the inspiration for a bubble activity taken from the GF platform and we made our very own "over the rainbow" snacks.

We used a crest from E-Patches for camp; the link is below

Crest

Below is the link for the camp booklet which has the schedule, menu and all the breakdown of the activities

Wizard of OZ Camp Booklet

We were able to make lots of program connections with this one which was fun for the girls as some of them were able to complete badges by attending camp!

As usual please I would really LOVE to hear if you use the camp plans, what you changed, what you liked and how you made it your own!

Meal Planning

Meal plans....I used to cringe at the thought of having to plan a whole weekend of food for girls and leaders. There are lots of questions when it comes to this kind of planning;

• Where do I start?
• How much do we charge for food at camp?
• How do we include the girls?

Let's start from the beginning......

Where do I start?

The best place to start is by deciding how many meals you need. This will all depend on how long your camp is - is it two nights or one night. If it is one night do you need dinner, breakfast etc? If it is two nights - how late are you leaving on your final day, do you need breakfast and lunch?

I will go with our typical two night camp for the purpose of this post. When we camp we usually go from Friday evening to Sunday before lunch which means we need the following meals;

• Friday night snack
• Saturday Breakfast
• Saturday Lunch
• Saturday Dinner
• Sunday Breakfast

Now that we have our meals we can move on to the next question....budget

How much do we charge for food?

For our camps the rule of thumb we go by is $10/day. So we usually have a total of $20 for the whole weekend for food in our budget. The breakdown of our $20 is as follows

• Friday $5
• Saturday $10
• Sunday $5

Now if you are doing more meals it may be more and if you are doing less meals you may charge less. Some people will say well $20 does not seem like a lot and it doesn't but I can tell you this we have never once had a girl or adult complain about being hungry. If anything we usually have too much food.

*Please remember I am giving guidelines for how we do things it may vary from unit/district/area

How do we include the girls?

Including the girls does not have to be hard. What we usually do is decide which meal each unit is going to decide on because we tend to camp with more than one unit. For example, our upcoming fall camp is Sparks & Brownies. So we decided who would pick what then we poll the girls and that is how they decide.

At this level we usually start the conversation by asking what sort of foods they eat for ________ meal. The girls will give us their ideas then we continue with well which of these foods do you think would be easy for us to make at camp? We keep doing this till we have narrowed it down to 3 options and then we have the girls vote

Another way to do this would be to talk about healthy eating and have girls build their ideal camp menu in their patrols or circles; this could fit into the Be Well program area then from there they can come together as a group and pick which meals they want to use at their camp.

Odds and ends

The above are the basics that we as a unit go through to plan our meals for camp. There are other things we consider such as;

• How easy the meals are to prep
• Can they be done in bulk
• How do we accommodate food restrictions/allergies within the meal

I hope this keep tips have helped some of you in part and cannot wait to hear how your next meal planning meeting goes!!

Girls First: How it affects our Camps?

The simple answer to this question IT DOESN'T!

Isn't that great? If your unit already let the girls pick what they want to do at camp or what they want as a camp theme the new Girls First program won't change a thing in your programming. We have always let our girls choose the camp theme for both our winter and summer camp. The only exception to this was if we really wanted to do a specific challenge or badge work that we thought the girls would benefit from. What i love about this new program as well is badge work is flexible so things we do at camp can easily count for girls of all age levels and it's all the same themes!

Here is how we start our process;

1. The first or second meeting we have a brainstorming session of what the girls ant to do for the year, this includes what they would like to do at camp. Older groups may give you themes where younger girls sometimes give us activities they want to do.
2. Leaders take these ideas and decide which ones would be easiest to form a camp around; we usually narrow it down to 3 or 4 options.
3. Each unit leader goes back to their groups and the girls vote on which theme they want.
4. Leaders fill in a doodle poll based on the MAJORITY vote of their group
5. The theme that gets the most votes is the one we use.

It's that easy! How do you and your groups choose camp themes or activities?

Harry Potter Camp

This past weekend we had a residential camp with girls from Sparks through Rangers. The theme of Harry Potter was picked and voted for by the girls. The leaders went from there and had more fun planning then we liked to admit (we have some Harry Potter fanatics for leaders). We played Quidditch and had activities based on all the classes from Hogwarts; we also had a birthday at our camp she turned 8 but didn't want to miss camp for her birthday so we did a cake decorating activity then all the girls sang to her at dinner and we had cake for dessert!

We used a crest from E-Patches for camp; the link is below

Crest

Below is the link for the camp booklet which has the schedule, menu and all the breakdown of the activities

Harry Potter Camp Booklet

I have done something different with this booklet at the suggestion of someone who was reading the site; the last page has links to program to the best of my ability.

As usual please I would really LOVE to hear if you use the camp plans, what you changed, what you liked and how you made it your own!

Trolls Adventure Camp

The girls picked this theme and it was a tent June camp with Sparks and Brownies. The leaders were unsure at first at how we could pull this off but it ended up being so much fun. There was a bit of program work covered in this camp;

• Brownies - Key to I Can (Sewing Magic) & Happy Hiking

This camp was different in the way we handled "free time". We had an ongoing project of Troll houses that we started on the Friday night and girls continued through Saturday when they were on free time or done doing their patrol chores. The girls loved it; we put on music in the work area (we had the trolls soundtrack) and the girls sat in groups with their friends working on the homes. We left bins of craft supplies out that they had access to. If a glue gun was needed that was the only time a leader stepped in to help with younger ones.

Once again we used a crest from E-PATCHES you can find the link below.

Crest

Attached you will find all the instructions for crafts, games and even a sample menu. Please feel to leave comments with how YOU did things!

Trolls Adventure Camp Booklet

Below is also a few pictures of the completed trolls houses. We placed these as well as all their other crafts from the weekend in empty cookie cases that we had collected and brought with us so they would stay safe going home.