I cannot count this as mom camp, but I’ve got to share it!
On one of our Long Island days, we got a bit of rain. And The Cutie Cousin got a bit bored. Teaming up with another teen who came to visit, they created a wonderful of delightful mischief.
Spare google eyes were left over from the clam project and suddenly appeared everywhere!
P.S. Thankfully no one was electrocuted! But, I do not recommend putting google eyes on light sockets!
Filed under Mom Camp 2014, Travel with kids
With Cinco at camp, The Princess and I planned a mom camp day dedicated to Frozen!
First thing in the morning, we made popsicle. Don’t ask what I was thinking— I let her put sprite and skittles in the popsicle molds and stuck them in the freezer.
Frozen Gummies, Anyone?
We also decided to invite one of her friends over to join in the fun– let’s call her Snowflake from now on. Before Snowflake arrived, we read a Frozen book and I gave The Princess a cute Frozen sticker book to play with while I was at the gym. It seemed to keep her occupied.
We rushed back home to meet Snowflake and let our crafting begin. There are tons of Frozen resources online and some very cleaver ideas.
I printed out a few items including:
PLUS….
Snowflake models her bracelet
After making The Princess and Snowflake each a packet of printables… I got to work on our projects.
The Princess’ necklace
Each girl got to create a Frozen inspired piece of jewelry. I gathered a bunch of clear, crystal-like plastic beads. I was concerned the jewelry would look too dull if they only made of “icy” beads. I decided to add a few beads in different shades of blue and threw in a purple or two for good measure.
Snowflake opted to make a bracelet. The Princess decided on a necklace. Both girls looked very fashionable in their creations!
Our next craft were a set of Anna and Elsa crowns. I printed both crowns for each girl–no fighting during mom camp! While the crown’s creator suggests using glitter to glamorize the crowns, that as going to be too messy for me. I went out and I got some self adhesive pearls and diamonds to bling out the crowns.
Next, it was time for the popsicle taste test… Everyone agreed they were a bust, BIG TIME! Both girls rejected them and begged for popcorn instead. No problem.
Now it was time to start the movie…within minutes, Snowflake and The Princess were wearing the crowns and singing their hearts out until Snowflake’s mom picked her up.
I’ll count that a successful Frozen Day!
Filed under Mom Camp 2014
Even the best planning can be undermined by good ol’ public transit. Our third day in London, the Tube’s Green line stopped working and our plans to head off to Hampton Court via Wimbledon were ruined! This sent me running sideways to figure out our next plan.
Going with the flow, we hopped a cab to Southwark to see the new Globe. Meanwhile the kids were holding a hunger strike because they didn’t like any of the British food. Priority number one was finding lunch. Based on their love of breakfast we opted to have breakfast for lunch– which satisfied my wild beasts for the time being.
Sadly, by the time we got to the Globe, the tours for the day were over! Ugh. I however, paid too much for the airplane tickets to be defeated so easily!
Pulling a page from the Harry Potter movies, I took the kids across Millenium Bridge.
Once across the bridge we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’ve been to England four times before this trip and not once did I ever make it to St. Paul’s. I am rather surprised I never checked out the dome before. I love a dome–St. Peter’s in Rome, The US Capitol Building in Washington, DC, Haigia Sophia Dome in Istanbul.
We all went in and headed straight to the Whispering Gallery. It is located about half-way up the dome and you can whisper on one side of the gallery and be heard on the other side. I resorted to asking a guard exactly how it worked because we had a little trouble figuring it out on our own. Once we got if figured it out, the kids really had fun playing with acoustics over an over.
We kept climbing the dome and made it to the first outdoor level. I tried to get Cinco to climb all the way to the top, but it wasn’t for him. He stayed on level 2 with Queen Gram and The Princess and I went to the top! She started to get nervous as the stairs got tighter and higher, but she made it. Only 5 years old and she made it. We took a few cute pictures and headed back down to Cinco.
Before we left for England, Cinco and I studied some of the foundation myths of London. One dated back to the story of Aeneas. One of his sailors, Brutus, founded the city and this is the foundation stone. It’s in the old city and we walked by after the Cathedral.
Then it was off to bed!
What does mid-summer mean to you? For Cinco and The Princess it means: Fairies, Fairies and more Fairies!
The longest day of the year is traditionally thought of as a night when the fairies come out to make mischief. But, it also includes bonfires, BBQ and eating lots of that favorite summer fruit, Strawberries. For the kids it’s all about the fairies!
They loved making fairy houses for mid-summer last year and insisted on revisiting that activity this year. In fact, The Princess told me to cancel the trip to England if we didn’t do our mid-summer activities! Thankfully, the trip was planned so that we would be home in time to make fairy houses and celebrate the longest day of the year!
This year we spent time making the houses. The kids changed it up a bit. They decided to add a movie theater for the fairies and The Princess even painted a fairy on the movie screen. What’s even better is that The Princess decided it should be an old-fashioned silent movie. (Thanks to Jillian for the cigar box donation!) Another new addition is the grand entrance hall, complete with guards! It is a bit garish, but hey they are kids.
The old stand-by throne room is prominently featured in the fairy compound. Cinco out did himself on the room– red walls and fake wooden floors. Plus, his chair is pretty blinged-out. The Princess also decided some of the important rooms needed chandeliers ~ooh-la-la!
The Princess designed the bedroom as well. I actually found last year’s bed from the queen’s bedroom. The Princess did not want use it again. We reused the pillows and then made a new bed. This year, the king fairy will also have a bed in the queen’s room ~ how racy!
We had a dinning room table last year and cute food. But, I think the table and food presentation have improved over last year! Cinco decided to use beads to make a number of fruits. My favorite were the grapes!
The solstice is also traditionally celebrated with bonfires. Our summer solstice celebrations also included making our own edible fires. If you want to make and eat your own, here’s how:
Supplies:
Instructions:
We also grilled on the BBQ for dinner and had strawberry shortcake for dinner. After we played with a few sparklers to reinforce the fire aspect of the day!
Filed under Mom Camp 2014
Our second day in London was spent at the famous Natural History Museum. We arrived and went straight to the dino exhibit. It fills up fast and I wanted the kids to get a good view of everything!
Pictures by Cinco!
Cinco and The Princess LOVED it! Cinco even asked to borrow my phone and used it to take photo’s of the dino bones. I think he must have taken over 100 photos. Everything was interesting to him and everything needed to be examined and documented.
At the end of the dino exhibit is an animatronic T-Rex. Everyone bottle necks in the room and watches it for quite sometime. What was rather funny about the T-Rex, is that our local Natural History Museum in Las Vegas has an almost identical T-Rex. We went all the way to London and stood in a big crowd to see something we could see at home any old time… haha..
We got one of the explorer backpacks for kids from the main desk. Our was about Mammals.
Based on clues in the backpack, we had to play detective and figure out our mammal. The choice was quickly narrowed down to either a wolf or a bear. We had a claw, a set of teeth and a patch of fur. Cinco got it right off the bat and The Princess needed all three clues before she figured it was the polar bear.
Then it was time for another great museum lunch! The kids were less than happy.
Having read the Ashton Place novels–particularly the third one (Review Available Here)–, the kids were very interested in the birds. The were most interested in the ostreages and dodos which are prominently featured in books 3 and 4. We made it to the bird area and everything was going well. We saw the dodo and the ostreages.
Then things took a turn for the worse…we happened upon a series of glass cases displaying only the bird’s head– mainly humming birds. This did NOT sit well with The Princess. She quickly figured out that these little creatures had been decapitated in LARGE numbers. There was no crying but rather an uncomfortable horror at the notion that anyone would think cutting the heads off these beings was acsetpable. I think it hit her hard because we have many humming birds that come to visit us in out backyard and they are very small and rather harmless.
After hightailing it out of there, we explored the museum’s amazing earth science section. The area is accessed through an escalator that goes into a structure meant to be the center of the earth. This was somewhat unsettling for the kids after the bird experience. By the time we reached the earthquake none of the kids would do the simulation. So, I went ahead and did it without them! It lasts a lot longer than I thought it would.
The Princess never really recovered from the bird incedent so we left the museum and went out into the nature garden behind the building. The weather we lovely and the museum was sponsoring a Ladybug hunt. Amazingly, we found quite a few. Most of them were young bugs that had not transformed into the bright red, spotted bugs we all know and love.
Yes, I am counting the flight and the airport time as two separate days. I mean come on, it’s an international flight and keeping the kids together (figuratively, not literally is challenging!) on the flight is enough to turn any mom’s hair gray.
First of all, I cheated! I bought tickets on Virgin Atlantic. It’s more expensive, but the inflight entertainment is totally worth it. Each person gets a choice of movies and games to keep them occupied. Frozen and the Lego Movie hurrah! And, Virgin even offers special kid friendly meals. Not that anyone loves airplane food.
Girl’s Pack
Boy’s Pack
Second, I am going with the old standby toys. Each one has a backpack filled with little items. There is one item per hour per child— a lot of stuff.
A few things are from the dollar store, but a lot of the things are print outs from the internet about England:
Third, snacks. I know, chips and candy aren’t the best food in the world. But hey, it’s a vacation!
Fourth, I did not forget the disposable tooth brushes with toothpaste already applied on them. I have fuzzy socks and sleep masks for both kids. Cinco even got a mask with Zombie eyes on it. So fun…
You may have guessed by now that with our trip to England coming up, we are spending a lot of time on all things British. In preparation for seeing Magna Carta we dedicated a mom camp day to learning ALL about it.
I decided to use the Disney movie 
I freely admit the movie is in no way factual. But, that’s when I stepped in and started explaining how the movie was different from real life. King John was over taxing his barons. Of course, Magna Carta is about more than just being over taxed. He was also dictating who rich widows married and turning too much of England into forest land, among other things.
Next we printed out some adorable and free Robin Hood masks from Sparklebox and put on our own Magna Carta play. The masks include the main characters from the Robin Hood story, but we improvised and used some of them for the barons and widows and other characters. The Princess insisted on playing evil King John and Cinco played the barons. Given our love of William Marshal we included him in the play as one of the negociators of Magna Carta.
Shameless plug for my William Marshal book:
With a little more help from Disney, I took what was supposed to be a Bambi craft and used it to talk more about the forestry laws before Magna Carta. After all, you could be killed or imprisoned for poaching the King’s deer!
Moving on to more serious matters, we also completed a 4-page lesson from the British Council on Magna Carta.
And, this is Cinco, The Princess and me looking at one of the four original copies of The Magna Carta in Salisbury Cathedral. It is supposed to be the best preserved of the existing copies. i must agree it looked brand new! Lucky for us, we had the chance to actually hover over the document. Although it was written in Latin, we did find The Marshal’s name on the document. He’s listed in a prominent place at the head of the nobles and after the bishops and king.
Filed under Mom Camp 2014
After a family vacation, its time to start good ol’ Mom Camp again. The original plan was to have two or three days for our Knight and Princess theme. But, with school just around the corner and so much to do before it starts, we had to squeeze things into a single day.
We made three crafts. The Princess wanted wands. I found these at the Dollar Store and saved them. She didn’t add too much decoration, but she was happy with them…
Next we made these cute little princess and knight crafts. The idea came from Busy Bee Crafts. Although we made up the princess craft ourselves. We used some left over fabric, glitter sticker sheets, cotton balls and buttons. The Princess needed a little help getting started, but Cinco made his knight without any help!
The next craft was a dragon! The idea for this one was borrowed from Activity Village. It was originally supposed to be a dragon made from a wooden spoon. Sadly, I didn’t get the chance to buy any wooden spoons so wemodified the craft and used plastic ones. The kids still had a great time painting and designing the dragons.
For our reading, we have been listening to 
Our movie was: 
Update: I did do a Magna Carta Day….
Filed under Mom Camp 2013
Okay, okay. The thing is that Mom Camp has been going on, it’s just that I have been a bit too busy to blog about it. So, I’d better do some catching up…
On Day 22, we needed to stay close to home because the maid was coming. I had to come up with an idea that would keep the kids engaged all day but not result in a crazy mess or get in the way of the cleaning ladies…hence Board Game Day!
We started out with Clue.
Next, it was Guess Who.
We played Brain Quest Smart.
In the afternoon, we hit the pool. 
After the pool and back at home, I put on Clue The Movie.
The movie went off and The Captain came home and it was time for a family game night–please note this only the 3rd time we have actually had a family game night. 
Filed under Mom Camp 2013
At the Movies, 2013 | Despicable Me 2 (Photo credit: e r j k p r u n c z y k)
The Captain was sick today and spent the whole day in bed–poor lovey! So, I was left with the two munchkins. The plan was to hit the pool for the day, but it seems the weather was a bit cloudy with a chance of meatballs. Thus, indoor activities took over!
Okay so, I kinda over did it with TV and movies but what are hot, humid, rainy days for if you cannot watch too much TV?
I ran off to a Bikram yoga class while the kiddos watched 
Then a quick shower, quick lunch and off to Despicable Me 2. The kids really love the minions– although they call the characters the be-doe-be-doe-be-does. If you have seen the preview for the second movie, you know what I am talking about. Until about 2 weeks ago, the kids had never seen the first Despicable Me. I thought it seemed a bit violent. But I borrowed the movie from a friend and they LOVED it. Plus, they loved the be-d0e-be-d0e-be-doe preview, so I caved!
After the movie we made our own little minions. I thought painting wine corks would be a good idea and Cinco thought covering them in construction paper was a better idea. I have to agree– his idea won! 
Filed under Mom Camp 2013
The Booky Mom 