Cabin Adventures

 Our cabin of girls this session are quite entertaining... so I see it only fit that I share some of the adventures of our cabin thus far since we are about 1/2 way done with the session!
    This session Cindy and I decided to have different themes each week having to do with different types of environments. The first week we chose the rain forest because we thought that it would be fun to decorate. Unfortunately I have not taken pictures of our vines and randomly placed paper snakes and monkeys, but as the heart above indicates it sure is "Enchanted" :)
   The second week of camp our theme was the desert. To be honest, we didn't really do too many activities, nor did we decorate... but I did make a pretty sweet Word Search that the girls have enjoyed and I checked out some books at the library so that when they had time the could read them and look at the pictures. This week is an ocean theme. If we have time, we are going to do some origami with the girls and maybe make name-tags in the shape of ocean animals.
   One really meaningful thing that both cabins of girls got to do last Wednesday evening was the FIRST EVER  A.C.E. Girl's Night. Heather organized the event, along with help from Alexa, and it was a great success. The girls made lip gloss out of Fruit Punch mix and warmed Vaseline. The girls loved it, and we as the counselors did our best to convince them that they really didn't want to "accidentally" consume too much of the lip gloss even though it tasted really good. After the lip gloss and the subsequent trips to wash their hands of the greasiness of the Vaseline, we did "Compliment Name-tags". Basically all of us wrote our names on a piece of construction paper, taped them to the ground and wrote a compliment on everyone's paper. My personal favorite on mine was "You smell clean". After the name-tags all of the girls set out their sleeping bags on the floor and we watched the movie "Rio" while eating popcorn. Everyone really had a great time and I think the girls really felt the love that night... which is what a lot of them need because we have a lot of girls that are dealing with low self-esteem this session.

   On Thursday afternoon we took a hike as a cabin "up the hill" and did an activity that is a personal favorite, called Ant Farm Realty. On our way, we found this cool tree that was growing over the sign that was posted on it.
    Once we got up there, I also noticed how three or four of the trees looked as though they had been scorched at some point; maybe lightening.... either that or there is some disease making all the bark come off the trees.
   After hearing the girls' hypothesis on the bareness of the trees they began the construction of their ant realty. In the end, the girls made some very creative properties. Interestingly, all of the groups had a spa area on their property for the ants. One group had a hospital, cemetery, school, and a grocery store. One of the more hilarious comments came from Chloe in the group with the hospital. After one of the girls was jokingly giving her a hard time she goes, "Imma gonna build me a hospital because you're about to put me in it!" I giggled to myself for a couple of minutes about that one.

The last picture here is one that was taken by Arrianna. She noticed how pretty the sunset was, so I asked if she wanted to take a picture of it. This is the view from the equipment shed looking out at the field.
   This week has started pretty well, and Cindy and I are making sure that we continue to switch things up on them help them work on those things that they want to while at camp. This first night this week was a bit challenging as a couple of the girls had a lot of homework and had to stay up late, then wake up early to get it done. We are excited for the rest of the week and are glad that we will probably get to camp out tomorrow because the weather has been pretty nice this week.