Dinosaur Camp 2017



Can you say terrific?!



Can you say fun?!

My assistants and I decided to do dinosaurs for camp this year. I had done it with their older siblings years ago. Dinosaurs appeal to all ages and girls as well as boys.   

     

 The gathering activity was creating dinosaurs out of  craft foam geometric shapes. We had a snack and then took a field trip to the museum. We had a good time and we learned a lot. It held the kid's attention for over an hour. Each of the kids had to pose with their head in the jaws of a hungry dinosaur!

Every year I get a group photo that is displayed all year in a frame in the kitchen at the kids table. I wanted this years to be on the Sinclair dino just like the one of their older siblings and cousins. The only problem was when our very close station became a Texaco 2 weeks before Camp! My daughter-in-law knew that she had seen one several miles further North of the museum, so we loaded up and got the picture I had to have. Come to find out there were at least 3 closer to home!

On the way home we stopped for lunch at a park with  splash pad. When the water turned off to recycle the water, the kids went to the playground and played "hot lava". My assistant and Grandpa were a lot of help keeping an eye on them all.

 

When we arrived back home, we had fun making the volcano erupt. I had made the volcano the week before Camp. I stacked upside down whipped topping, sour cream, and yogurt containers and taped them to a cookie sheet with a rim that could catch the "lava flow". Then I paper mached the whole thing and painted with craft paint. I had a small 2 oz. container that was nestled into the top of the volcano to hold the lava. I then placed small plastic dinosaurs, from a pack I bought at the dollar store, around the base so that the lava could bury them a make them extinct.  Each child took a few turns making it erupt and then decided to let it dry out so that their parents could use it the next day.

 
We made Stone Soup for dinner, adapting the story to cavemen and using Brontosaurus burger, club moss, etc. along with stones. Each child added a different ingredient and of course their own stone! I had the kids shape roll dough into dinosaurs before baking. As you can see the assistant archaeologists like to ham it up for the camera. The kids ate every drop of soup! Even the pickiest eaters will eat what they have cooked.

The last time I used this theme, I had saved a few bones from a turkey, beef roasts, pork chops, you get the idea. We buried the bones in a garden grow box for the kids to find. Well this year we buried the bones of a half a cow! One of my co-workers had a connection to a slaughter house. It took my son in law and hubby several hours to get all the bones buried under the apple trees but it was well worth it! 

When it was determined that we had real archaeologic discovery, we decided that a real "site" had to be set up. We set up strings  and numbered the bones and where we found them. Grandpa spun a yarn about having called the museum about our "discovery" and told the kids that it would be named Grandmalasaurus and would be in school textbooks! We placed all the bones on a tarp to figure out what we had.

As usual, we made a stepping stone to mark the weekends events. A plastic dinosaur was placed in the cement along with the handprint of our newest camper, Ariya.

We made petroglyphs of glue, water, and sand with various pasta shapes on a plastic plate. This takes a while to dry and some went home wet. At least, I think they made it home without landing upside down in the car!

 

 It took a little a lot of help from the fathers to figure out what the dinosaur should look like.

 The Pinata is always a hit! Pun intended!
These boys each picked a bone to take home and then later worried that they should take them to the museum so that the "Grandmalasaurus" could be assembled correctly.

I think I can call this camp a HUGE success!