One spring as I was looking through all the summer camp brochures and thinking how expensive they were, I realized that I could probably do most everything they offered on my own, and if I couldn't I likely knew another mom that could. My friends and I decided to make our own summer camp.

I asked a group of friends that I had met through the local Mothers & More chapter playgroup. We were all moms that had decided to put our careers on hold until our children were older, so we didn't need the daycare aspect of camp. Each one of us came with different interests and areas of expertise, so we decided not to make a theme to the camp. Every week, one mother would host the camp for everyone else; moms and kids would all participate. The topic and related activities were the host's choice. It was a little tricky trying to plan activities that would appeal to kids from 2 to 6 years old, but they all enjoyed having a camp day and learned a little about the topic.

That was five years ago, but I still remember the teepee and target practice at our Native American day, investigating bugs and pond critters on nature day, playing with hoses, pumps and siphons on waterworks day, and several experiments on human body day. We also set up a little backyard carnival party with everyone bringing a carnival-type game they'd created and a dish to share.

Camp moms, if you read this and remember something that I haven't listed, let me know because I know I've forgotten a lot of what we did.

A couple years ago, a friend and I tried a variation on the Mom Camp idea. She took the younger children and made salt-dough creations with them while I took the older ones and worked on making a raft. The dough class was simple and fun. For the raft class, I had planned to teach the 9 and 10 year old boys how to figure out how much bouyancy you can get from an empty container, do some calculations and plan our design. WRONG! They didn't want anything to do with planning or calculating! They wanted to DO! (duh!) Well it wasn't like the raft was going to be our lifeboat. If it sank, it sank. So, we dispensed with planning and began to tie and duct tape anything bouyant we could think of into the shape of a rectangle. We gathered 5 gallon buckets with lids, plastic jars, pool noodles, and 2-liter bottles from neighbors. It took very little time to get the raft to the testing phase. We managed to stuff our recyclable raft into the van and went to the creek, which was barely deep enough to be able to determine if something would float or not.

The raft floated our brave tester boy for a moment and then began to break apart. Everyone chased down the parts that were beginning to float away and we took the raft to the bank for some reconfiguring. Luckily I'd brought the duct tape and zip ties, so we reorganized and reattached various pieces right there and tested again. And again. And again. The raft class turned out to be totally different from what I'd planned, but everyone had a blast and learned a lot about bouyancy without even realizing it.

I'm starting to think about what topics to explore with Mom Camp this summer. Maybe we could build our own squirt guns or make a contraption that would capture kid power to run a fountain...