Camp Mom: Day 4

[My son's summer-camp this year is a do-it-yourself affair with a couple of friends from his special-ed class hanging out at our house. I'll post a run-down of our activities daily, for others who may be looking for ideas. If you're doing something fun, too, please share it in the comments.]

Thursday is Field Trip Day, and this week our outing was to the Meadowlands Environment Center, a little slice of nature sandwiched between factories and the New Jersey Turnpike. There are lots of scenic trails through the marsh, with ducks and muskrats and egrets and a multitude of little water-hopping bugs as companions, and the kids were pretty interested in the grasses and wildlife and waterways. It would have been a really successful outing if it wasn't like 100 degrees outside, and we weren't all melting from the humidity by halfway through our mile-long walk.

It was about at that halfway point, too, that I realized that I wasn't just walking with hot kids, but with kids for whom the heat might pose a problem -- one of our crew has asthma, and the other two have had heat-related health issues in the past. Everyone made it back to the air-conditioned museum without incident, but if we come here again, I'm going to be armed with bottled water (and pick a cooler day).

The very small museum, which had some microscopes for examining tiny marine lifeforms, some larger representations of indigenous birds and animals, and various multimedia presentations, was a hit with the kids. Also with the moms, who got to sit down and enjoy the air conditioning.

After lunch, back at our house, we had the kids write in their journals about their Environmental Center trip (they'd already forgotten too much about yesterday's movie to do any reviewing). Here was my son's entry: "We took a walk to see what there was to see. We found a lot of interesting stuff. We found ducks, alligators, and a lot of other stuff like poop from ducks." The alligators, not so much, but he's probably right about the duck poop.

The day's craft was one I picked up from About's Frugal Living site: melting down crayon shards to make new multicolored crayons. We put the crayon in cupcake papers inside muffin tins, resulting in crayons (pictured) that look like some sort of fruit-flavored Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. While the crayons were in the oven, the kids did a little homework, then we pulled out the melted-wax wonders just in time for everyone to go home. They'll enjoy the cooled fruits of their creativity with some coloring tomorrow.

• More Camp Mom days