Superhero Kid Camp

Alice's first Kid Camp happened this week. She had 10 kids aged 3-6 years old over for three afternoons of superhero-themed fun. When I asked her about it for this blog post, Alice described it as, "Loud. Crazy."

But if you had seen her yesterday as the last of the campers headed home, she was glowing with delight. She really digs this age group. They listened to her pretty well. We had a whole series of superhero activities and games lined up, too, so there was never a dull moment. I particularly loved how Alice handled all the noisy work (gathering kids, giving directions, answering questions) while I got to run everything behind the scenes (clean up the last activity, set up for the next activity, prepare for the next day's activities, and defer all kid requests to Alice or Mamie). It took a lot of energy to run the camp, but I think it was worth it.

Alice got heaps of experience and burned off some of her extrovert leadership energy. She also got practice in budgeting and time management and thinking on her feet.

Robert could play or help or walk off to read a book as he liked. At one point, he got all the kids running after him with their pool noodle swords and beating him silly. He's young enough to find that fun and old enough not to take it too far. A quick video here:



James and Matthew were "in" the camp as enrolled participants. They were fully engaged with the other kids. James got a little clingy the last day, but not overly so. James, especially, helped a ton with the preparations. He loved cutting cardboard, spray painting shoe boxes, cutting out hero masks, making beanbags, choosing villains to print out, and testing out the activities before-hand. And he's capable of doing a lot of that on his own with supervision.

That said, I'm glad we don't have Kid Camp for another couple weeks :)